RE: Ecoboost-Powered Radical Revealed
Discussion
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.Chris, there's much in what you say, but it's easy to overstate the merits of bike v car engine, especially in something relatively light like a Radical.
Most trackday Radicals get trailered to trackdays, not simply because they are not road registered and where do you put your bits, but because setting a Radical up for the road means less than optimum settings for the track - that will apply as much to an SL as it does to an RS.
We share SimonT's experience of a bike-engined Radical's maintenance & reliability, albeit his in race conditions, ours in trackday conditions; with pretty much only regular oil changes, after over 100 under load trackday hours in a 1299 Busa, we had four perfectly equal compressions /leak downs as per a new engine.
The big strength/attraction of a bike engine is it's ability to rev with no need to worry about how much torque it has; it's genuinely exciting to drive, feel and listen to from the driver's seat and this tends to reduce significantly when it's car engined, even when it's a very fine one like a Honda VTEC as used in the SR5.
From the practical point of view for trackdays, a 2 litre VTEC engined SR5 would apparently be better than a 1500 Busa engined SR3, but drive the two of them back to back and most if not all would pick the SR3 by a clear margin because it's that much more exciting in overall experience terms and excitement means much more than practicality in something like a Radical.
Whereas, the Honda couldn't make up the shortfall, I'm optimistic that the Ecoboost may well be able to. BTW, not that Ford parts are cheap nowadays and I'll bet they're still a surly and unhelpful bunch of beggars behind the Parts Counter at the local Fraud Dealership
Most trackday Radicals get trailered to trackdays, not simply because they are not road registered and where do you put your bits, but because setting a Radical up for the road means less than optimum settings for the track - that will apply as much to an SL as it does to an RS.
We share SimonT's experience of a bike-engined Radical's maintenance & reliability, albeit his in race conditions, ours in trackday conditions; with pretty much only regular oil changes, after over 100 under load trackday hours in a 1299 Busa, we had four perfectly equal compressions /leak downs as per a new engine.
The big strength/attraction of a bike engine is it's ability to rev with no need to worry about how much torque it has; it's genuinely exciting to drive, feel and listen to from the driver's seat and this tends to reduce significantly when it's car engined, even when it's a very fine one like a Honda VTEC as used in the SR5.
From the practical point of view for trackdays, a 2 litre VTEC engined SR5 would apparently be better than a 1500 Busa engined SR3, but drive the two of them back to back and most if not all would pick the SR3 by a clear margin because it's that much more exciting in overall experience terms and excitement means much more than practicality in something like a Radical.
Whereas, the Honda couldn't make up the shortfall, I'm optimistic that the Ecoboost may well be able to. BTW, not that Ford parts are cheap nowadays and I'll bet they're still a surly and unhelpful bunch of beggars behind the Parts Counter at the local Fraud Dealership
Edited by splitpin on Wednesday 22 December 10:06
splitpin said:
Chris, there's much in what you say, but it's easy to overstate the merits of bike v car engine, especially in something relatively light like a Radical.
Most trackday Radicals get trailered to trackdays, not simply because they are not road registered and where do you put your bits, but because setting a Radical up for the road means less than optimum settings for the track - that will apply as much to an SL as it does to an RS.
We share SimonT's experience of a bike-engined Radical's maintenance & reliability, albeit his in race conditions, ours in trackday conditions; with pretty much only regular oil changes, after over 100 under load trackday hours in a 1299 Busa, we had four perfectly equal compressions /leak downs as per a new engine.
The big strength/attraction of a bike engine is it's ability to rev with no need to worry about how much torque it has; it's genuinely exciting to drive, feel and listen to from the driver's seat and this tends to reduce significantly when it's car engined, even when it's a very fine one like a Honda VTEC as used in the SR5.
From the practical point of view for trackdays, a 2 litre VTEC engined SR5 would apparently be better than a 1500 Busa engined SR3, but drive the two of them back to back and most if not all would pick the SR3 by a clear margin because it's that much more exciting in overall experience terms and excitement means much more than practicality in something like a Radical.
Whereas, the Honda couldn't make up the shortfall, I'm optimistic that the Ecoboost may well be able to. BTW, not that Ford parts are cheap nowadays and I'll bet they're still a surly and unhelpful bunch of beggars behind the Parts Counter at the local Fraud Dealership
Agree with you there splitpin. I guess its down to what the customer wants. And like you say if you are trailering the car to the track then the Bike engined option would probably be the better choice for the smaller lighter radicals! The lighter more compact engine would suit the chassis better. Most trackday Radicals get trailered to trackdays, not simply because they are not road registered and where do you put your bits, but because setting a Radical up for the road means less than optimum settings for the track - that will apply as much to an SL as it does to an RS.
We share SimonT's experience of a bike-engined Radical's maintenance & reliability, albeit his in race conditions, ours in trackday conditions; with pretty much only regular oil changes, after over 100 under load trackday hours in a 1299 Busa, we had four perfectly equal compressions /leak downs as per a new engine.
The big strength/attraction of a bike engine is it's ability to rev with no need to worry about how much torque it has; it's genuinely exciting to drive, feel and listen to from the driver's seat and this tends to reduce significantly when it's car engined, even when it's a very fine one like a Honda VTEC as used in the SR5.
From the practical point of view for trackdays, a 2 litre VTEC engined SR5 would apparently be better than a 1500 Busa engined SR3, but drive the two of them back to back and most if not all would pick the SR3 by a clear margin because it's that much more exciting in overall experience terms and excitement means much more than practicality in something like a Radical.
Whereas, the Honda couldn't make up the shortfall, I'm optimistic that the Ecoboost may well be able to. BTW, not that Ford parts are cheap nowadays and I'll bet they're still a surly and unhelpful bunch of beggars behind the Parts Counter at the local Fraud Dealership
Edited by splitpin on Wednesday 22 December 10:06
However i think the SL (which is somewhat larger if i read the OP correctly), which is heavier than most normal radicals, is more suited to the ford plant.
Be intresting to see a track only version with say the Hartley V8 in there.
Chris.
edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.Blueprinting is typically only done where the race regs preclude uprating internal parts. The "standard" internals will either be junked and replaced with a kit of carefully balanced and dimensioned components selected from the manufactures production batch or "fettled" so that they are bang on manufacturer specs. Doing this is expensive in terms of man-hours and/or component parts.
In both the blueprinted and uprated applications, you're still having to crack open the engine, rip it to bits, and use new parts.
rhinochopig said:
edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.Blueprinting is typically only done where the race regs preclude uprating internal parts. The "standard" internals will either be junked and replaced with a kit of carefully balanced and dimensioned components selected from the manufactures production batch or "fettled" so that they are bang on manufacturer specs. Doing this is expensive in terms of man-hours and/or component parts.
In both the blueprinted and uprated applications, you're still having to crack open the engine, rip it to bits, and use new parts.
What I was saying is that the Honda engine in a VdeV car is for all intents and purposes (as I understand it) a standard Honda engine. The engine in an SR3 is a Hayabusa engine that's been stroked to add 15% to its deplacement. You would anticipate Honda have engineered the engine to be reliable, but Suzuki haven't engineered their engine to be able to take a 15% increase in displacement and still maintain factory reliability.Or put it another way, what do you think would be more reliable. A 2ltr Honda, or the same engine stroked to give 2.3ltrs and still run at 8.5k rpm?
edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.You would for example gain a benefit from using the largest pistons and the tighest bores allowable on the specs for an engine.
Given that the tollerances on engines are always decreasing as manufacturing techniques improve I assume that that the actual gains due to blueprinting will be dropping over time.
Talksteer said:
edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.You would for example gain a benefit from using the largest pistons and the tighest bores allowable on the specs for an engine.
Given that the tollerances on engines are always decreasing as manufacturing techniques improve I assume that that the actual gains due to blueprinting will be dropping over time.
An engine manufacturer may list a piston ring end-gap specification of 0.003 to 0.005 inches for general use in a consumer automobile application. For an endurance racing engine which runs hot, a "blueprinted" specification of 0.0045 to 0.0050 may be desired. For a drag-racing engine which runs only in short bursts, a tighter 0.0035 to 0.0040 inch tolerance may be used instead. Thus "blueprint" can mean tighter or looser clearances, depending on the goal.
edb49 said:
What I was saying is that the Honda engine in a VdeV car is for all intents and purposes (as I understand it) a standard Honda engine
I'm not sure that's true, for a start the CN spec engine is 250bhp, dry sumped, and, costs what near to 10k if you get one from Mountune? A great engine though - as others have said it feels bulletproof.edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
edb49 said:
rhinochopig said:
What you said doesn't make sense. A blue printed engine cannot, by it's very definition, be "standard spec inside". Blue printing an engine is building one from scratch using components, which are as close to manufacturers specs as possible.
I always thought blue printing was getting as close to the manufacturer's standard spec as possible... hence the engine is a standard spec. But I think we're arguing about semantics? I suppose a different way of saying the same thing is a blue printed engine has no uprated parts in it.Blueprinting is typically only done where the race regs preclude uprating internal parts. The "standard" internals will either be junked and replaced with a kit of carefully balanced and dimensioned components selected from the manufactures production batch or "fettled" so that they are bang on manufacturer specs. Doing this is expensive in terms of man-hours and/or component parts.
In both the blueprinted and uprated applications, you're still having to crack open the engine, rip it to bits, and use new parts.
What I was saying is that the Honda engine in a VdeV car is for all intents and purposes (as I understand it) a standard Honda engine. The engine in an SR3 is a Hayabusa engine that's been stroked to add 15% to its deplacement. You would anticipate Honda have engineered the engine to be reliable, but Suzuki haven't engineered their engine to be able to take a 15% increase in displacement and still maintain factory reliability.Or put it another way, what do you think would be more reliable. A 2ltr Honda, or the same engine stroked to give 2.3ltrs and still run at 8.5k rpm?
Chris.
splitpin said:
The big strength/attraction of a bike engine is it's ability to rev with no need to worry about how much torque it has; it's genuinely exciting to drive, feel and listen to from the driver's seat and this tends to reduce significantly when it's car engined, even when it's a very fine one like a Honda VTEC as used in the SR5.
Have to say, my reflection on driving a 1300 Radical is that of a lot of noise and revs without much sensation of go, which is not to say your perception is wrong, it's just my taste.On the assumption that the arrival of this model isn't going to result in the discontinuation of another, I can only see the expansion as a good thing.
juansolo said:
HundredthIdiot said:
What ever happened to those Palmer Jaguar JP1 things?
ISTR they used 3L jag engines, surely as unstressed as you can get?
Any engine that spends it's entire working life in the last 2000rpm of its rev band is going to be stressed. It's the frequency of the refreshes that show how hard it is on them. Radical bike engines have around 30hrs between rebuilds, the K20A used in the CN spec cars has 80hrs (same for the gearbox). Costs will be high in both cases, but frequency is down on the K20A. Time will tell which turns out the cheapest to run. But as others have mentioned, you don't exactly run these cars based on the 'cheapness' of it. ISTR they used 3L jag engines, surely as unstressed as you can get?
Saying that, we're running ours on a very tight budget by doing as much as possible ourselves, but it's still a very expensive toy that neither of us could afford or justify on our own. They're massively, massively addictive things to play with though...
realistically, his has done north of 200 hours at well north of 300 Bhp on a very std engine.
Scuffers said:
juansolo said:
HundredthIdiot said:
What ever happened to those Palmer Jaguar JP1 things?
ISTR they used 3L jag engines, surely as unstressed as you can get?
Any engine that spends it's entire working life in the last 2000rpm of its rev band is going to be stressed. It's the frequency of the refreshes that show how hard it is on them. Radical bike engines have around 30hrs between rebuilds, the K20A used in the CN spec cars has 80hrs (same for the gearbox). Costs will be high in both cases, but frequency is down on the K20A. Time will tell which turns out the cheapest to run. But as others have mentioned, you don't exactly run these cars based on the 'cheapness' of it. ISTR they used 3L jag engines, surely as unstressed as you can get?
Saying that, we're running ours on a very tight budget by doing as much as possible ourselves, but it's still a very expensive toy that neither of us could afford or justify on our own. They're massively, massively addictive things to play with though...
realistically, his has done north of 200 hours at well north of 300 Bhp on a very std engine.
juansolo said:
One thing that was mentioned to us that as we weren't racing ours the rebuilds would be less frequent. Apparently one was taken apart that was mainly used to trackdays and demos for 100hrs and it was still in top condition. I suppose its more for the racers on that front that want a guaranteed top performing engine. We've stuck a timer on ours so we know what we've done and we're going to play it by ear.
that's very much the case...as with most things, it really comes down to how it's used, with all the will in the world, you cannot drive on a trackday like you would when racing, you might string a lap together, but no way can you do this for 20 mins +
the way you guys are doing just trackdays, I can see it been good for 500+ hours easy
also, some drivers are harder on engines than others, simple fact of life.
K20 wise, unless they have an issue, never seen one eat the bearing's, that does happen is the pistons/rings/bores wear, and a simple leak-down test is as good as anything to asses how bad this is.
Scuffers said:
juansolo said:
One thing that was mentioned to us that as we weren't racing ours the rebuilds would be less frequent. Apparently one was taken apart that was mainly used to trackdays and demos for 100hrs and it was still in top condition. I suppose its more for the racers on that front that want a guaranteed top performing engine. We've stuck a timer on ours so we know what we've done and we're going to play it by ear.
that's very much the case...as with most things, it really comes down to how it's used, with all the will in the world, you cannot drive on a trackday like you would when racing, you might string a lap together, but no way can you do this for 20 mins +
the way you guys are doing just trackdays, I can see it been good for 500+ hours easy
also, some drivers are harder on engines than others, simple fact of life.
K20 wise, unless they have an issue, never seen one eat the bearing's, that does happen is the pistons/rings/bores wear, and a simple leak-down test is as good as anything to asses how bad this is.
juansolo said:
Scuffers said:
juansolo said:
One thing that was mentioned to us that as we weren't racing ours the rebuilds would be less frequent. Apparently one was taken apart that was mainly used to trackdays and demos for 100hrs and it was still in top condition. I suppose its more for the racers on that front that want a guaranteed top performing engine. We've stuck a timer on ours so we know what we've done and we're going to play it by ear.
that's very much the case...as with most things, it really comes down to how it's used, with all the will in the world, you cannot drive on a trackday like you would when racing, you might string a lap together, but no way can you do this for 20 mins +
the way you guys are doing just trackdays, I can see it been good for 500+ hours easy
also, some drivers are harder on engines than others, simple fact of life.
K20 wise, unless they have an issue, never seen one eat the bearing's, that does happen is the pistons/rings/bores wear, and a simple leak-down test is as good as anything to asses how bad this is.
chuntington101 said:
From what i have heard the 'busa engine is a very stong and robust little engine. they seem to be able to hold upto a lot of abuse without problems. the turbo guys have push over 500bhp through stock blocks.
Remind me what happened to the SR3 turbo with a 'mere' 360bhp from a turbo 'busa engine? chuntington101 said:
From what i have heard the 'busa engine is a very stong and robust little engine. they seem to be able to hold upto a lot of abuse without problems. the turbo guys have push over 500bhp through stock blocks.
this is more a case of people talking, and engine that do one dodgy dyno run, never to see the light of day again though.Yes, you can boost them to hell, but they will not last 1 lap of somewhere like Silverstone GP...
I keep reading about stock K20's with turbo's doing 900-1000+ bhp, however, never actually seen one in a car that's still moving.
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