Unit 2 Fabrication Inc is certainly a major player in the improved reliability of the Type R in 2018. The meticulous engine work of Eric at Lavigne Motorsports was being subjected to torment with James behind the wheel pushing the car to extremes that the engine simply could not handle. The RacePak data acquisition software demonstrated that in 2017 the high G lateral forces, which were sustained in some sweeping corners, was causing the oil pressure to drop as low as 20 lbs. That will and did result in the loss of the engine at SuperLap Battle in 2017. The cost of a dry sump system was and is intimidating for any team and James was simply not able to make that financial commitment. Mitch at Unit 2 discussed his thoughts on improving the existing system. Eric and James agreed and Mitch went to work designing and building a prototype oil pan. The K-Tuned Type R has been running this prototype throughout 2018 and Unit 2 Fabrication Inc has now brought it to production. Ian Rae, support and data analyst for the team, points out that where the car was dropping down to an engine killing 20 lbs of oil pressure in 2017 that the Unit 2 Fabrication prototype oil pan has changed the game. Data proves that the oil pressure never dropped below 60 lbs in 2018. That means that this Unit 2 oil pan, in sustained high lateral G corners, has increased the oil pressure by 40 lbs. This is an incredibly huge improvement and is massively less expensive than a dry sump setup. The K-Series Elite oil pan from Unit 2 Fabrication Inc. is now available to the public.
The pan consists of a machined 6061 billet flange with formed sheet aluminum meticulously Tig welded together. As you look closely at the photos you can appreciate why Mitch inserts the adjective meticulously. This oil pan has six separate compartments with eleven trap doors. The need for all of this is simple – allow the oil to flow where it needs to be flowing and then keep it there during sustained high G cornering. This high capacity oil pan increases the oil volume to nine liters which, in and of itself, adds to peace of mind. The RacePak data shows consistently 80 to 60 lbs of oil pressure even with lateral G’s spiking over 3 G’s. Eric’s engines are safe from whatever cornering G’s James forces them into. According to Unit 2 Fabrication Inc, the first batch of these Elite Oil Pans has already sold out. The next batch will not be built until the new year.
21 comments
So it will still be called the K-tuned integra with a Haltech on it?
This is absolutely the K-Tuned Integra Type R! K-Tuned is not engine management. There are so many K-Tuned parts on this car that I’ve lost track – the shifter, suspension, fuel rail to name a few. Visit K-Tuned.com for more of their product line. The Haltech ecu is tuned by Evans Tuning. Enjoy reading.
Love watching the progression of this car. Good stuff on the turbo setup with the thermal insulation and cold air source. I would consider a small scoop on the hood for the intake. Love the new heat exchanger arrangement with the ducted hood. Interesting stuff with the new Stoptech setup.
Khiem, I had that same question/comment for James about an intake scoop. James, there are two of us who’d like to see a scoop! Thanks for the comments! This car is even more of a beast!
I wouldn’t use a scoop –> Drag! But a naca-duct would work fine Or if your adament on using a scoop: design a backward facing one close to the front window. There should be enough pressure there….
As for the splitter/wing thing: Its a packaging thing: I would use a single splitter/wing combo if room permits, It’s easier to calculate how much downforce you can expect that way. But when there are packaging constraints you can double up like your doing now. It’ll create a bit more drag, and the effectiveness in creating downforce of the splitter will deminish on the part where the wings are above. But thats compensated by the higher amount of downforce (and drag) of the wings placed above it.
And as for the next step: When you still want to use separate wings above the splitter: Just incline and extend the lower part of the wing . Extending is a simple trick to run less angle (surface area is king) without loosing downforce, but decreasing drag. A straight piece can be used if thats easier to fabricate.
Really great insight, Kevski-style. I hadn’t even thought of a naca-duct but that would be a great possibility. Drag is exactly why James has been running it like this! And I cannot contribute anything to your aero comments except to say thanks for sharing. Frank
No problem, just glad I could help! I designed this stuff for single seaters with a “slightly” bigger budget, so its no biggie to help out. Besides: I like the car!
Good call on the NACA duct. I did design my own for the S2000, ha.
And not really that hard: So long as you keep the de inclination angle no more then 10 degrees from the surface its mounted on. So long as you know your math (Pythagoras) your good to go. You know what the intake side needs to be dimension wise. So thats the verticle side of the Pythagoras equasion. You already know the maximum angle, so you can of from that to measure your minimum length. But you also know your maximum lentgh that can physically Fit on the hood. Because less inclination angle, is less air disturbance, is less drag. The other trick in designing your own is using 1/5th or 1/4th of the with of the back up front, using a widening taper for the initial part of the intake of roughly 10 degrees and let the actual duct begin to widen from 1/3th of the total length of the duct.
Seriously good tech, but also seriously old tech: 1945 . But then again: V-bands which where actually Marman Clamps are from the ’30’s 😉
I wouldn’t use a scoop –> Drag! But a naca-duct would work fine Or if your adament on using a scoop: design a backward facing one close to the front window. There should be enough pressure there….
As for the splitter/wing thing: Its a packaging thing: I would use a single splitter/wing combo if room permits, It’s easier to calculate how much downforce you can expect that way. But when there are packaging constraints you can double up like your doing now. It’ll create a bit more drag, and the effectiveness in creating downforce of the splitter will deminish on the part where the wings are above. But thats compensated by the higher amount of downforce (and drag) of the wings placed above it.
When you want to use a wing above the splitter: Use a single wing as long and wide that is allowable. You can then lessen the angle of the wing, to create the same amount of downforce but lower the drag. Its all about surface area: The higher the surface area, the lower the the angle can be for the same amount of downforce.
What do you think about the front wing and what the front of the car does to the flow field behind the front wing?
Lets first separate wing and splitter. Not for you Mike Kojima, but for the rest thats also reading this. And replace “wing” with spoiler. I’ll come to that in a minute. A splitter is a low drag solution. It increases drag only in the slightest as long as you don’t go overboard. In other words: The magic number is about 10cm of splitter material thats sticking out, or 4″ in the obsolete system (yeah, I’m from Europe 😉 ). A splitters works only because of 2 things: A resistance behind the splitter (a.k.a. the front of the car) and because of the lack of pressure underneath the splitter. So in itself it isn’t any better then a spoiler, but it’s using resistance that already there.
A wing, or a spoiler as I like to call it, does exactly what the the spoil means: It spoils. In this case air. It creates a deflection of air to create a vacuum below the wing (Bernoulli). And because of that vacuum air gets sepparated. So to answer your question: It desturbs it a lot.
What you ideally want is to only use a splitter for downforce, as it is the most efficient because of what I said earlier. Spoilers are used best on the backside of the car. If you use a spoiler on the front of your car, it becomes your problem. If you use it on the back of the car, it becomes somebody else’s problem.
Where problems start to arise in with using front spoilers, is that you have to have a fairly high understanding of aerodynamics, high computational power, a wind tunnel, or have to get fairly creative with string, tape and a video camera on the road on a day without any wind. Otherwise it’s luck at best. Every spoiler spoils air for the back, making the aerodynamic setup on the rear of the cars less efficient.
I would much rather use a larger splitter if rules permit it. And if using a spoiler, would use one with the highest amount of surface area and the least bit of inclination angle. If rules don’t allow that then spoilers come into play. But only if there is a real gain to be had. And in a sense, that all comes down to horsepower and car weight: Downforce you generate is way more effective on a lighter vehicle. I would much rather build a vehicle that is way to light and ad weight to strategic places then the other way around. And having horsepower to spare is the place where spoilers really come into play. There still is a drag penalty, but is overcome by high horsepower figures.
I would much rather have a low drag setup then a high drag setup. The first car that come to mind is the Mclaren F1 roadcar. Thats because the to what most people think the whole car is actually producing downforce: The hood and the windscreen on roadgoing cars. But on le Mans and single seater cars it’s actually the air channeling through the body itself. A roadcar example, would be car like the Ferrari F50. The clearances in the hood are to warm air away from the radiator. Drag needs to be present there anyway, since you need to cool the engine. Why not use that to lower drag and increase downforce? Its where the front axle is located….
For me, with sedan based race cars, it’s usually a struggle to make enough front downforce to balance the rear.
It always is. As a rule of thumb: The farther in the front the downforce is created, the better it is, Force x arm. Both of the above mentioned cars have a long sloping hood starting a long way before the front wheels. With an sedan thats usually not the case. You could alter the slope of the hood, extend the front, etc. But thats usually not a viable option. And you don’t want to create drag and use wing. Best option is under the hood, but in front of the axe. So a duct for the radiator helps a lot. You can get away with 45 degree angles without causing that much more drag. And if you calculate surface area you’ll be amazed how much it ads.
But what gets me the most is wheels and fenders. Placing your wheels as far out as possible is a good thing (als long as you don’t get carried away with offset wheels), but why would you leave even the smallest portion of tire exposed? Looking at the Honda above: Lower half of the front and rear tire.
A single seater has this problem exagerated: About 40% of drag comes from the wheels. But they use slicks. A road car would be worse with exposed tires with tread. Just think of them like a big fan turning against the wind. Enclosing the frontal area fully will reduce lift: A tire forces air under the tire, creating lift. When you incorporate that with a splitter making sure there are no gaps (duct tape). Enclose the ends with and end plate that fully enclosed the side of splitter about 4 inches high. And while your at it: extend it to as low as you can below the splitter. Make sure it also mounts directly to the extended wheelarch without gaps. Fine tuning is done with a piece or cardboard in between the bumper and the end plate. You can slope it any way you want. Then just tape it down and start testing. Works just like a wing, but it forces air over the arch in stead of the sides, where turbulent air resides coming from the wheels.
For the rear: Rinse and repeat. And after that you could still ad canards to the outside of the end plate to ad more downforce. Thats what the endplates are for: To separate the flow. And aerodynamic devices on the outside of the car won’t have such a detrimental effect on the rest of the aerodynamics. It also limits the amount of air goig under the car if you extend them below the splitter, which means higher speed and less pressure. There is one slight side effect: The car behaves differently on turn in. It will not be as crisp as without the mods. But since your a engineer as well thats something you can probably work out?
As for vehicle specific info: I have to have specific photo’s/blueprints of the car to help you along.
Your tricks are the same things I do. The other problem is cars with very little front overhang are hard to get downforce on. A lot of late model cars are like this. I have a question that I truly don’t know. What are the louvers that are starting to be incorporated into wing endplates doing?
Mike, the gills in the endplates allow them to directionally bleed high dynamic pressure (usually on top of the wing.) This reduces drag due to the reduction of the vortex strength. F1 cars in the 80s had huge vortices on the rear wings you could actually see in wet conditions.
That makes perfect sense, I see now!
@ Joe: Thats not the case. In a closed wheel car your theory would be possible, but as I mentioned earlier: wheels account for high amounts of drag and turbulence. So they are in essence used as a curtain. But you are missing quite obvious fact why your theory is incorrect: Look clearly at the louvres? Which direction are they pointing at? All of them are facing outward and down. If you would try to bleed of pressure, they would be facing outward and up. Way less drag that way. Besides, there is already a bleeding device in place: DRS: Drag Reduction System. So they are used to guide air in, not out.
In my time with Toyota in Köln (in my time Toyota Motorsport gmbh, currently Toyota Gazoo Racing) it was already in the R&D stages in 2007. We decided not to pursue it back then because of the drawback’s. In essence the whole rear bodywork needed to be redesigned to make it work propperly. See below for the actual stuff it need to do….
@ Mike Kojima:
Main reason is to use pressure/turbulance from the tires as beneficial as possible. But its a double sided sword really: It can have quite detrimental effect if not properly designed, and if properly designed: Gains a very small benefit.
That being said: F1 has dabbled with it since a couple of years. All because of the class rules. You could potentially make a spoiler bigger when flowing more air then it normally would by forcing turbulent air through a strainer (the louvres) and in essence making it less turbulent (drag) and used for downforce (introducing it to the airstream of the spoiler). So unless your running in a class which dictates spoiler dimensions, stay far away from that. And if you really want to do it: First spend a lot of time behind a computer testing everything as much as possible. Then start building to account for real life data. Because you really don’t want to do this unless you’ve a got a couple of million to spare.
As for the overhang: Yep, thats correct. You have to make a frame thats supports everything to the chassis for that. But rest assured: I’m more into old cars: Currently need to extend the front of car nearly 20cm or 8 inch just to reach the splitter. And the splitter itself is nearly 20cm from the ground itself. Kind of like a bigfoot, but normal back in the day.
But it is kind of possible. Ford in the states did it on a pickup in the 80’s or 90’s I believe. Ugly as hell, but it does work kind of: Bonnet spoiler. Ads some drag in itself, be lessens drag at the windshield.
Or use a multi stacked front wing: As long as each an every new wing above the other is farther apart o the back of the wing compaired to the front (1:2 ratio) you could stack it. But drag will become an issue eventually. Thats why every stacked wing is usually made shorter the farther its up on top. But in essence its still Bernoulli.
That’s why you build a shallow diffuser in front of the tire, or use strakes to divert airflow. Porsche usually has small ramps for a low drag flow diverter. You can also build air curtains that vent in front of the tires to reduce drag.
The main problem with FF front downforce is no place to direct air in order to get sufficient mass air flow. A MR would be able to direct through the hood (ala Ferrari 488 Pista S-Ducts), or out through the front wheel wells. There is a nice LP zone in front of the wheels if you have enough front overhang.
Otherwise, more DF in front is a real puzzler. Too long of a splitter and you must run really aggressive spring rates to reduce porpoising, which is really dangerous (think losing DF entering a corner on the brakes.)
It looks awful, but Padakis built a high mount front wing. That, obviously works.
I wonder if you could build an air intake on the HP zone on the bumper and exhaust on the windscreen area, but it will probably hurt rear DF.
Not a lot of good options on FF, unfortunately. If you built a front subframe you could probably engineer a pretty impressive set of side wings with VGs. The ones pictured are very simple. Take a look at a modern F1 front wing with 10-20 elements for ideas. They use the Y250 vortex (through the chassis and inside the tire.) But, you would have to use an outboard VG, on the endplates (expanding cone shape.)
A agree with you fully on this one. In stead of stronger spring rates, you could also use anti dive. That should eleviate the problems a bit, but has it’s own problems in itself.
As for the Y250 vortices: They are used quite extensively, but always in conjunction with the existing aerodynamic shapes. There has to be flow separation at that point on the car. Otherwise they do more harm then good. A ton of data has to be collected for them to work properly. Because in essence, they are just used to re-energise the boundary layer separating. So in the same essence, they are only used to make the systems you are using more efficient.
Y250 litterally stand for Y=center axes of the vehicle 250=250mm wide . So thats about 10″ in the outdated system. An FF road can be designed to incorporate that, but it has to be a very thight package: Less front overhang means less space to incorporate the duction out through the bonnet, and a sollution for the radiator has to be made, because a real S-duct cant have any obstruction it. But if there is room besides the radiator and after it you could use 2 channels next to the central intake of the radiator. But in most cases thats not possible because of the way the car is built. Y250 is generally only usefull on open wheel cars because of the shape of the body and the rules. On road cars that would be a far wider area: Usually the whole width of the hood. so anywhere from Y1000 on smaller cars tot beyond that on the wider ones.