After the whole oil starvation fiasco with the XS BNR32 Time Attack GT-R, I decided to bite the bullet and go with a dry sump oil system. A dry sump system involves a external oil pump, a oil tank, and a TON of stainless AN hoses and fittings. It’s pretty damn expensive. Luckily since I work at Cosworth, Skip in the Champ Car/Formula Atlantic track support department is helping me out with setting up the dry sump. Working at Cosworth has it’s advantages. Skip used to manage the NASCAR Busch engine programs and he suggested either an Auto Verdi or a Barnes 5 stage pump. Since XS does not have a money tree, we went with the Barnes pump (the Auto Verdi is about $3500). The pump I got is the exact same specification as a NASCAR Nextel Cup pump (and it costs like it). Cosworth has an existing relationship with Barnes and they are across the street from Cosworth so I basically walked across the street to pick up the pump. Anyhow, the high boost, straight 6 will need lots of scavenging (4 stages) to produce vacuum in the crankcase. With vacuum in the crankcase, this means that the rotating assembly (rods, crank, etc.) does not have any windage (wind resistance) and you get free horsepower. Since the pump is picking oil up from a 3 gallon tank in the back of the car, there will be no oil starvation from the swishing of oil. Wet sump oiling and fast track cars just don’t mix.
I’m pretty excited about the new Tomei/HKS/Cosworth engine, the new KW motorsport suspension, and now the dry sump oil system. We’ll be running a new Tomei 77.7mm stroke crankshaft, HKS rods, HKS pistons, and Cosworth bearings with all machining done by big Mike at Cosworth. KW is mostly known for european cars, but they chose us to show the world that they can engineer bad ass suspensions for Japanese cars too. Their motorsports engineers do a lot of suspension design with touring cars and DTM cars. KW supplied us with a triple adjustable, external reservoir, motorsport type dampers and springs so we can rock the competition. Lots of time, fabrication, and tuning will be necessary from the boys at XS Engineering, but this will ensure that the XS GT-R remains the fastest time attack car in the country. Maybe Japan? The future will tell.
5 stages of lubrication = 9500rpm through the turns.
External reservoir high and low speed compression adjustment.
Front BNR32 GT-R damper. Note the super big bearing at bottom. No weak ass bushings here.