I know what you meant



http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/z...d3/towelie.jpg

I'm sure you can. Just gotta see how the trigger mechanism works for the fan and you're good to go.

FML, were breakin records here in Phoenix (92* the other day) and my ECT's are 210-215 after 15+ mins of stop and go driving already.. Bat's and IAT's were high as shit also.. Went with water wetter/DW last Aug/Sept.. apparently it didnt help temps much.

FYI,

I personally think one of the reasons I have been able to keep the stock block together is that I rigorously follow a few simply rules:

1.) Never beat on the car until ECT's are up to temp (no more than 5-10 PSI), because clearances aren't right and KR is not active.

2.) Never beat on the car if ECT's are high (over 200°F), my pulls are typically after highway cruising with ECT in the mid 180's.

3.) Never do back to back pulls. Mine are always at least 3 min of highway driving apart and typically much longer.

2/3 help avoid overheating the piston and butting the rings, which is what I would believe is the most likely hypothesis to explain why people are breaking ring lands...

I do also run plenty of meth/eth for KR avoidance coupled with 2 heat range colder plugs than stock...

This is indeed a very different regime than what someone would see on a road course.

That is essentially how my car is driven as well, except with the occasional 1/4 mile runs. I have never even seen my ECT's break 200. lol

I am sure that in the summer you will see over 200 in traffic with little airflow. There is definitely something to be said about keeping the motor cool.

My car was indeed daily driven...in Toronto. For awhile, I had to make a daily trek of about 30km each way, but about 15km was in stop and go each way...every single MF'ing day. I hate being reminded of those times.

I have seen as high as 230°F while waiting for the wife shopping while parked with AC on in 100°F ambient temps.

I just made sure to avoid boost entirely until about 5 miles later when temps were back below 200°F.

I would say that situational awareness is pretty important...

What if the situation is to get the fastest lap time?


While I agree with your methods, I personally feel that if I'm making my car fast I'm not making it fast to be an on-ramp hero.

I guess I just need an upgraded rad there no way around it. The only problem is there are no options for the Gen2 that I am aware of.

agreed but correcting and or mitigating the situation is preferred. Then you don't have to be so aware :)

We are obviously operating outside most if not all design limits of the package and have just not directly addressed the heat management with its necessity being brought on by all the ringland failures that is now more prominent due to working around all the rod failures.

Typical method for moving forward.

My comments were in regards to mitigating risk without having any cooling upgrades. In my case, I feel it is reasonable to be extra conservative on temps due to the fact that I am running over 2x the stock power level with stock pistons/ring gaps...

You sound like you might want to consider some upgrades if you are operating at extremely elevated power levels in situations where you need lots of back to back pulls.

Has anyone upgraded there rad on here?

I don't mind using a gen1 rad so long as I can make it work without too much custom work.

I think it should be safe to say that if you track you should upgrade the rad.

@cld12pk2go; how many miles have you been running over 400hp?

~12-15k.

And about another ~25-30k between 350-400wtq prior to that on the K04...

IIRC cld12pk2go is also running 2 stage colder plugs. That may be another of the many things that have he has done to successfully make good power over the long term.

Edit: He listed that above...reading fail on my part.

Kept it here rather than deleting it... may be worth posting 2x's.

At what point did you switch over to the 2 step colder plugs?

Fuck!

Here's a summary of one of my road racing sessions on Jan 19th:

and here's another session from the same day when I let a pro driver drive my speed:

Looks like the AWR radiator will be on its way soon + I need to think about an oil cooler.

Back when I was still on the K04 and running ~350wtq...

Maybe 25-30k miles ago...

I have never had a fouling issue...

So i've been reading through this thread the past few days and i'll admit 100% there are some things i don't understand completely. Some of the members who participate in this thread have knowledge that beyond surpasses mine. But i'm curious as to why our cars seem so sensitive to heat i.e. coolant temp's and oil temps. I do understand the heat soak concept and that too hot is just going to kill off power and can result in damage. But i find it odd that our cars respond so sporadically to the high temps. I work at a bmw dealership and have been talking to one of my friends who is a tech about coolant temps and such. It turns out that all of our vehicles, including all of the m vehicles, operate normally with coolant temps above 200 and upwards of 250. This even includes the modified vehicles that come into the shop for service and function just fine under the high fluid temps. Given this is in the engineering of the vehicle to run like this, why is it that our cars respond so poorly to these factors. As much as i love my car, it's clear that mazda has designed them with a bunch of inadequacies. I'd be interested in seeing if we can get enough members to pitch the idea of a cost effective cooling system (bigger radiator and fan) to one of our venders. Granted that it would still be an expensive part to upgrade, i figure $600-$1000 for a better radiator and lower temps is cheaper than a blown motor.

i just had a guick question i want to get a fmic but it seems to cause higher coolant temps becasue of the blockage of the rad. with that said i dont really plan on tracking my car maybe once or twice a year if that, so is it safe to say for dding i can get away with fmic or should i be looking at tmic. thanks for the help

It's a balance between:
- the materials used for various things, such as valve guides, various rubber gaskets, hoses, and so on;
- engine optimal operating temperature and combustion chamber temperature (this may be about compression radio, spark plug heat range, spark plug position in the cylinder, and so on);
- cooling system design to dissipate all that heat and maintain a temperature of 180-220F in the system no matter if you drive your car at -40F at sea level in northern Canada or at 120F in Sahara or some other middle East desert.

There are some thresholds (in therms of amount of heat produced by the engine) for each side of the problem:
- if the cooling system is too big it will feed the engine with too cold coolant and that that may lead to various weird things;
- if the coolant system is undersized then all that heat will build up because nothing helps it go away, and eventually something will cook or melt.

Now we all know about the reliability of the BMW cars these days, so I wonder why would you compare the two, also considering that in general the BMW's have a larger engine compartment than the other cars in the same class (compare BMW series 1 with Mazda 3, BMW Series 3 with Mazda 6, and so on) which should help them cool better (anyway, their problems are in the fuel injection system area, not cooling).
And to not compare apples with strawberries here, find a BMW (335i, 135i, whatever) that makes 1.5+X of the factory power that is as reliable as a 2.3DISI-T with factory internals in it.

temps just started ramping back up here in AZ and I just ran a few sessions of road course with coolant temps hovering around 210-225 (on distilled water and water wetter).
I did beat the shit out of the car... but it usually stayed below 218. After a while I saw the car struggling and saw it ramping up to 225 (with plenty of straightaways for it to get air flow).
I will be strongly considering everything that has been talked about here... especially since I may be going with a FMIC soon, instead of my current TMIC setup.

Thanks to all of you for staying on top of things... and hopefully preventing cars that get pushed to the limit from blowing up. We may not have the biggest aftermarket support... but by far, this is the most united forum that works on improving the platform as a team, and not just wait for companies to go and do all the R&D for them.

pablo as you continue competing I would look into getting one of the bigger rads made for the car through sponsorship and testing it out on the track as a first step.

No ofense but you are speaking of something you may no little about. I am a protuner on the bmw n54/n55 platform for cobb. we have cars running e85 and methanol with upgraded twin turbos (factory modified turbos) and single conversions pushing 500whp and 600whp for a few years now. Over the weekend Ifinished remote tuning the vargas twin gtx2863 kit on the shop 335 and made 572rwhp on 91 octane alone (no meth or e85). I fly out to san fran april 11th to finish tuning for meth and high ofctane fuel. Aiming for 750 on the stock motor at the wheels. The block in the n54 came with forged internals and can handle massive amounts of power. Just look at some of the primitive tunes like the jb4 that have no timing control. It relies on the ecu and knock sensors to pull timing and that's running over double the stock boost pressure on a few thousand cars deep into the 11s in the 1/4. With complete tuning solutions like the AP we are making over double the factory horsepower and have only 1-2 engine failures a year which are typically at the track (road courses) and are from oil issues when exiting turns at full throttle. An oil baffle goes a long way for our car.

The n55 hasn't been opened publically yet so Icant comment on the structural integrity but Ihave a factory rod and piston in my office from an n54 and am happy to say Iam sure we can handle 600-700whp on factory block with a good tune. More than that only time will tell.

Thanks for the insight!
Around here the fuel pumps and injectors failure rate is pretty high for the N54s and these issues lead to a few grenaded engines at power levels around or below 380 crank HP.
The turbo failure rate is not negligible either... I think it's around 20%.

This is something I had been thinking about for a while, just taking all that blockage on the right side out and letting more airflow. I imagine since you mentioned having a larger fuse you jus spliced this one in to work in conjunction with the factory fan?

Update: I've been going back and forth with Tony at AWR and i'm confident he is interested in building radiators for both Gen MS3's. I have access to an uninstalled Gen1 radiator already and will drive my Gen2 up to him, pull the bumper and he can take measurements. I'm not promising anything but it sounds like we are on the right path. Can I get a quick poll of who is seriously interested in purchasing one of these for each Gen? I imagine the price point will be somewhere near the MS6 radiator of $550.

if the rad is going to be bigger then consideration needs to be taken with regards to FMIC piping clearance. I know my Cobb v2 barely clears my fan. I am talking 5mm or so.

Understood Dano. Lets let him look at both radiators first and can go from there.

+1. I am interested in the KOYO radiator upgrade, but my CXRacing FMIC hot pipe barely fits as it is with the stock radiator.

This is what i've been thinking, i just haven't had the time. I'll probably do this in the coming weeks for the fun of it. Definately want to do it before temps start to skyrocket to the "holy ballsack heat"

I would be down for something for the gen2.

What would the difference be between the $350 Koyo and the AWR?

To me, it seems the reason those "baffles" are on the right hand side, is to force air through where the fan is while sitting and at low speeds, and at higher speeds the airflow is enough to open them up. The only issue i could see cutting all that stuff out would cause, is maybe slightly higher stopped temps, assuming we did not include a seperate fan as done above?

90% of my driving is hwy anyways so im halfway tempted to say Fux it and hit it with the dremel but idk, maybe ill see how this thread plays out a bit more first.

Those are an early version of active shutters. They help the fan pull air through at low speeds and air pushes them open at higher speeds.

So essentually they're a happy medium, if we gut them we'd probably see better crusing temps due to less restriction, but increased stopped temps due to the fans operation now being "less efficient?" Not quite sure how to word that, but im sure yall know what i mean.

If you remove that side of the cowling, it would be best to put a thin seal between the shaved part and the radiator to prevent air from being sucked through the fan from behind the radiator instead of the front.

Dang phone. Yes there is a piece of plastic under the ms6 that guides air into the radiator. Think someone beat me to it.

fuck it i'm doing it...you only live once.