Dai Yoshihara's Team Falken/Discount Tire 2011 Formula D Ride
By Mike Kojima
The 2011 Formula D pre season is heating up and we are getting in a bunch of last minute coverage on some of the new builds that we can get access to. Last week we showed you an early look at Dai Yoshihara's Team Falken/ Discount Tire car coming together at SPD Metal Works. Now let us take you on a technical tour of the completed car as we caught up to it at Falken's pre season testing at Willow Springs Balcony.
For an earlier view of Dai's car under construction check here!
Dai's car is an evolution of the Chevy LS powered S13 chassis that he has been campaigning since mid season 2009. The car keeps on becoming more and more refined. Lets look at the car as it has evolved for this year.
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| The car looked and sounded good during testing at Balcony. |
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| The engine is a slight revision from the 2010 spec. The engine block is a 4.125″ bore, sleeved LS2 (the stock bore is 4″). For 2011 the stroke was increased to 4″ from 3.62″ raising the displacement from 409 cubic inches to 427 cubic inches. The compression ratio was also increased from 12:1 to 13:1 with custom JE forged pistons and Carrillo rods. The cylinder heads are Gen IV 243 seres castings with square ports. The heads are CNC ported with a 2.20″ intake and a 1.61″ exhaust valves. A big mechanical cam with Ferrea valve springs are used with shaft supported roller rockers. A FAST intake manifold is used with a 102mm billet throttle body. A Motec M48 engine management system drives the engine. The engine puts out about 550 whp and 495 lb ft of torque over a 5000 rpm super wide power band. This is a mild evolution of last year's engine with conservative gains across the board. |
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| A lot of the 2011 season revisions involves the cooling system. The car tended to run hot in 2010 and all efforts were made to keep the engine cool under any situation. A huge Griffin double pass aluminum radiator is nearly twice the capacity of the old radiator. The big radiator required that the car's front end be redesigned to accommodate it! Huge ducted fans move a lot of air through the radiator. Drift cars get poor airflow through their heat exchangers and every effort was made to help cool the car as much as possible. |
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| In addition to the radiator, large heat exchangers are used for the engine oil and power steering fluid. All fluid lines are plumbed with Earl's braided stainless hose and fittings. The black on the hose is heat shrink tubing applied by SPD to reduce chafing. The bar on top of the radiator is a water mist system to be used in extreme climates. |
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| This view through the rear window shows the water/ice reservoir for the mist system and the halon fire control system. The window is an anti scratch coated lexan part. |
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| The ignition is stock LS direct fire with McKinney Motorsports stainless S chassis swap headers and SPD engine mounts. Look at the fire sleeve on the Earl's hoses and Adel clamps holding them down. Details help reliability. |
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| Bottom detail of the engine shows the pickups for the Accusump and oil cooler with the front mount GM pan. |
