LocostUSA.com

Makes sense.

With regards to the front fenders, that's why I like the donkervoort cycle fenders of their nurburgring car.
They are much closer to the tire and cover it in the front much further down than all the Caterham versions.

Moti

Do you guys think this oil cooler will be enough to cool a street ported 13B for autocross? I have it sitting in my house right now and would like to put it to use. The core is only 8x11" but rather than using tubes and fins it has 36 rows of stamped aluminum so that oil is flowing through all of the metal on one side and all of the metal is exposed to air on the other side to provide maximum heat dissipation. The other nice thing about this cooler is that unlike the OEM cooler, which is very long, I can attach a 9" 1550CFM pull fan.

How hard would it be to setup a test with a hot plate some 10-W30 and two thermometers?

I think a real world test, installed would be best, but I'd accept the above test with a fan over "assumed math" any day.

Don't worry too much about oil temp at an autocross; it's not going to get very hot running 60 seconds at a time. Water maybe, but not oil. OTOH if the car will ever see trackday events than it's a really big deal.

I would like to do some HDPE events, but no competition. I guess I'll just keep a careful eye on the temperature gauges and upgrade if needed. I'm using a civic radiator but it's the 2 3/8" thick Bar & Plate design, which has WAY higher flow than a traditional tube and fin radiator, and a 14" pull fan.

After talking with other rotary seven competition car owners, where you put the cooler or radiator along with shroud design and hot air exit form the engine area is just as important as the cooler/rad size.

If you are considering a mostly track car you might want to check out an electric water pump to keep circulation after the engine is shut down.

I think you are on the right track adding auxilliary fans for the oil cooler. I am doing the same.

If you can, mount the oil cooler away from the radiator. It will help both keep cool. Make a shroud for you oil cooler too!

I also heard that the oil to air cooler found on a early 80's 12A is a very good unit (likely better than most "race" units) IF you can find one. It is a rather large unit so it might be an issue on where to mount it.

Show us you set up when you get it figured out.

Mark

If you are looking for oil coolers to scavange, all of the 850 turbo and v70 s70 turbo volvos have oil coolers.

An autocross is WORSE than the track for cooling in my experience with a rotary. I normally spend most of the run near redline, but the car is going fairly slow so not a lot of airflow through the radiator. And if you ever have a co-driver, the car gets little time to cool down between runs.

P.s> I don't think the Civic radiators are adequate for a rotary (and all the Rx-7 radiators are too wide for a 7 nosecone). Griffen makes an Econorail dragster radiator that is probably about the limit for a book nosecone. Get the dual pass version as the single pass is still marginal.

Hope i'm on topic here. Dont want to make my first post make me sound like a 'special' kid. My wife and I are planing on building rotary powered locost in the near future. Currently we are at the research stage, and I am just juggling around some ideas as far as keeping the engine and oil cool and what not.

My idea is to build or use 2 small radiators mounted to the forward sides(l+r) of the engine bay. Similar to the way the radiators are mounted on the side of the RC51(motorcycle)http://www.pbase.com/bdazxx/image/87119458 . Obviously the rads will be bigger hopefully a 3 core type. The basic idea is to have the oil cooler mounted up front in the standard location of the radiator and then have ducting extending back from the oil cooler to the rads to provide airflow. There will be openings on the side of the car to provide an exit for the aiflow and the idea is to build a scoop similar to the one found on an induction hood to provide a low pressure area over the outside of the rad when the car is in motion. There will also be a fan mounted on the oil cooler that will provide airflow past the oil cooler and rads while the car is idling in trafic or on the side of the track.

This is still theory since our build is still in the R&D stage and we will probably change things around as we get deeper into the project but the concept seems fairly sound and allows for much increased cooling capacity over the traditional front mount radiator design.

If you're going to drive it on the street, check with your local DMV on what it will take to make the car street legal, then find out who will inspect it and ask them about your radiator idea. Having something exposed and filled with scalding hot water doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

Well the radiators themselves will not be exposed. Well let me rephrase that. They would not be exposed any more then they would be exposed in their front mount location. Actually they will be probably less exposed because of the partial scoop that would be covering them. The basic idea is to mount them within the body. Ill see if i can photoshop a pic of a locost to better show my idea. I am sure that my description hardly does it justice.

I would not duct the (hot) air from the oil cooler to the radiators. And the radiators need their own fans.

Are you running the radiators in series, or parallel? I would think series would be easy to implement, but parallel would be better from a cooling standpoint (but might be very hard to implement).

2 radiators is more than I would attempt, but I have often though of doing something similar with the oil cooler, going larger and side mounting it (maybe adding small side pods to the car). Remember rotaries are also hard to quiet, so plan on leaving a lot of space for the (very hot) exhaust & muffler(s). Easiest thing may be to go to a +4 design to be able to fit a bigger radiator in the normal spot. And of course getting proper flow in and out of the radiators is at least as important as their size.

I am late to the game here and admittedly didn't read the responses here. However I have a link that you folks should check out. This guy Ron V. Pasdernick from Ontario has a really nice build log that starts about 10 years ago. (He's never been here as far as I know, he might be a Locost NA Yahoo guy??) IIRC this guy burned up multiple rotary engines due to the cooling challenges the present in a locost. It's an older build but I figger the lessons he learned are still valid:

http://www.softarc.com/~ron/locost/


He burned up engines with a big ol oil cooler and this big ol radiator:




Edit- after going back and looking, I don't think he ever disclosed how he solved his motor toasting problem, or if he ever did. The lessons I took from this are that rotaries are inherently evil and don't belong in a Locost.

Now Chet, that cuts to the bone! Of course I may just change my mind when I'm up and running. From what I have read, about 1/3 of the cooling of a rotary comes from the oil cooler. After seeing the insides of one of these, I fully believe it. The insides of the rotors themselves are cooled with oil that continually flows in and out of the rotor.

Well, my brother had a very fast RX-2 he used for track events. It worked great, after he upgraded the cooling system with a Corvette radiator and huge oil cooler to keep it in-line.