continued from above
Again, the fitting of these mufflers was something I dictated over 18 months ago, and it has taken a good bit of work to make them fit. The trunk floor cut out, the back of the trunk wall cut, and now these exhaust tip heat shields. Myles designed these and cut them out of aluminum on the CNC plasma table but when the design is finalized we will replace them with CNC laser cut stainless steel versions. I will show more of this work when it is completed, hopefully very soon.
REMAINING EXHAUST SYSTEM BEING BUILT
This was more August 2021 work that moved the project forward rapidly. Zach attacked this and started by making an adapter to go from the 3" header collectors to the larger 3.5" exhaust system (again, being built for more power use down the road). Once the transitions were made they were tack welded to the V-band flange and bolted up to the headers...
We had laid out the design months earlier and bought Vibrant stainless 3.5" diameter mandrel bends for the whole system (everything in the lower left pic plus a few more), with a mix of 45, 30 and 90 degree bends. The first step was to get around the transmission crossmember with some 45s and head towards the driveshaft tunnel.
Then it was time to lay out the X-merge, which we had to make from scratch. We always start with two 90s and cut out an oval shaped sliver in between, then TIG weld them together. This gets you the bank-to-bank cross flow you want without adding much if any restriction to overall flow.
With the X-merge built it was joined to the front section that heads to the header collectors. Lots of cutting, measuring, tape-up happens before the first tack weld is placed.
This goes on for hours of careful fabrication until you are past the X-merge and on your way to the rear section.
ACCUSUMP INSTALL
As I have mentioned before, this Phase 1 HPR built 383" LS6 engine is using a WET SUMP oiling system. Some like to think that only DRY SUMP oiling systems should ever be used on a road course, but of course that is not true. It is usually based on some legit engine failures heard about second hand without all of the facts. We've built too many wet sump LS engines to believe this. The key to keeping a wet sump LS engine alive at very high lateral and braking loads (road course use with R-comps or better) is good oil pan baffling and some sort of oil pressure accumulator. I also like to run LS engines +1 quart over "full", which burns oil at a faster rate and adds some windage, but I've never lost a wet sump LS engine when run this way.
I have also experienced one LS engine failure on track - the LS E36 above at ECR in 2008 on 315mm Hoosiers, BEFORE we added a 3 quart Accusump and baffled/trap door oil pan. It had a junkyard LS6 with unknown number of miles and I somehow let the engine get THREE quarts low on oil (long story - I was driving 3 cars that day and helping out 2 other drivers, so I was a bit distracted). This super low oil level caused a loss of oil pressure while cornering and the rod bearings began making racket, so I pulled in and it was the end of that day (but it wasn't catastrophe failure - that engine was rebuilt later for use on another build).
We replaced that with a more powerful LS2 based 7.0L and added the Accusump and Improved Racing pan baffle kit (plus an oil coolers) and never had an issue with it again. and we beat on that thing, making 500 whp. We have already covered the trap door oil pan on this build (and the work we needed to do to make it fit correctly) so the only missing link now is an accumulator.
So we found the right Accusump, and this monster is 24" long, which limits the number of places you can mount it - severely! I am all about the electronic triggering, so it doesn't need to be sitting next to me like in the E36 LS build, above. Having a hot volume of engine oil in the cabin is always a bit sketchy, in any case. Jason, Brad and I looked and there was SO much room in front of the engine that we snuck it in at the base of the radiator, ahead of the meaty Whiteline swaybar. Brad start making bracket templates...
The left side (driver's side) bracket was relatively straightforward to make. Brad was able to find an existing threaded hole in the frame rail and then tied into both mounting holes for the swaybar, with a place to mount the included Canton clamp bracket.
The right side was a bit trickier, and required one Rivnut be added to the lower subframe, as shown.
That bracket had a different orientation than the other side, but the cylindrical Accusump doesn't care. That bracket bolted to the swaybar and the subframe, as shown above.
This setup is much more rigid than I thought it could be, just showing how mounting on two planes for each bracket could stiffen up the assembly. Nice low mounting moves the CG lower, but its more forward than we had hoped - but again, not many places to mount something 24" wide like this.
We have a new pressure accumulator we are using on a couple of other builds in the shop (Masterlube) that is more compact and easier to mount (back corner of the BMW E46 engine bay above), but we didn't find that option for many months after this Accusump was purchased and mounted.
REMOTE OIL FILTER MOUNT + BYPASS + ADAPTER
There are a couple of pieces of the puzzle needed before we can begin plumbing the oil system for this car. The "Summit Racing" oil pan comes with an oil filter mount, but this Canton adapter allows for remote oil filter mount - which we want to do for two reasons.
We later realized we could order this oil pan without the oil filter adapter for a chunk less money, since we weren't using it anyway.
Once that was swapped on we started mocking up oil lines so we could order plumbing - these AN adapters screw right in and will make lines to the remote oil filter easy to run. The remote oil filter allows us to ditch the TINY oil filter made for an LS engine and replacing them with a much larger filter, that has more media and surface area.
continued below
Again, the fitting of these mufflers was something I dictated over 18 months ago, and it has taken a good bit of work to make them fit. The trunk floor cut out, the back of the trunk wall cut, and now these exhaust tip heat shields. Myles designed these and cut them out of aluminum on the CNC plasma table but when the design is finalized we will replace them with CNC laser cut stainless steel versions. I will show more of this work when it is completed, hopefully very soon.
REMAINING EXHAUST SYSTEM BEING BUILT
This was more August 2021 work that moved the project forward rapidly. Zach attacked this and started by making an adapter to go from the 3" header collectors to the larger 3.5" exhaust system (again, being built for more power use down the road). Once the transitions were made they were tack welded to the V-band flange and bolted up to the headers...
We had laid out the design months earlier and bought Vibrant stainless 3.5" diameter mandrel bends for the whole system (everything in the lower left pic plus a few more), with a mix of 45, 30 and 90 degree bends. The first step was to get around the transmission crossmember with some 45s and head towards the driveshaft tunnel.
Then it was time to lay out the X-merge, which we had to make from scratch. We always start with two 90s and cut out an oval shaped sliver in between, then TIG weld them together. This gets you the bank-to-bank cross flow you want without adding much if any restriction to overall flow.
With the X-merge built it was joined to the front section that heads to the header collectors. Lots of cutting, measuring, tape-up happens before the first tack weld is placed.
This goes on for hours of careful fabrication until you are past the X-merge and on your way to the rear section.
ACCUSUMP INSTALL
As I have mentioned before, this Phase 1 HPR built 383" LS6 engine is using a WET SUMP oiling system. Some like to think that only DRY SUMP oiling systems should ever be used on a road course, but of course that is not true. It is usually based on some legit engine failures heard about second hand without all of the facts. We've built too many wet sump LS engines to believe this. The key to keeping a wet sump LS engine alive at very high lateral and braking loads (road course use with R-comps or better) is good oil pan baffling and some sort of oil pressure accumulator. I also like to run LS engines +1 quart over "full", which burns oil at a faster rate and adds some windage, but I've never lost a wet sump LS engine when run this way.
I have also experienced one LS engine failure on track - the LS E36 above at ECR in 2008 on 315mm Hoosiers, BEFORE we added a 3 quart Accusump and baffled/trap door oil pan. It had a junkyard LS6 with unknown number of miles and I somehow let the engine get THREE quarts low on oil (long story - I was driving 3 cars that day and helping out 2 other drivers, so I was a bit distracted). This super low oil level caused a loss of oil pressure while cornering and the rod bearings began making racket, so I pulled in and it was the end of that day (but it wasn't catastrophe failure - that engine was rebuilt later for use on another build).
We replaced that with a more powerful LS2 based 7.0L and added the Accusump and Improved Racing pan baffle kit (plus an oil coolers) and never had an issue with it again. and we beat on that thing, making 500 whp. We have already covered the trap door oil pan on this build (and the work we needed to do to make it fit correctly) so the only missing link now is an accumulator.
So we found the right Accusump, and this monster is 24" long, which limits the number of places you can mount it - severely! I am all about the electronic triggering, so it doesn't need to be sitting next to me like in the E36 LS build, above. Having a hot volume of engine oil in the cabin is always a bit sketchy, in any case. Jason, Brad and I looked and there was SO much room in front of the engine that we snuck it in at the base of the radiator, ahead of the meaty Whiteline swaybar. Brad start making bracket templates...
The left side (driver's side) bracket was relatively straightforward to make. Brad was able to find an existing threaded hole in the frame rail and then tied into both mounting holes for the swaybar, with a place to mount the included Canton clamp bracket.
The right side was a bit trickier, and required one Rivnut be added to the lower subframe, as shown.
That bracket had a different orientation than the other side, but the cylindrical Accusump doesn't care. That bracket bolted to the swaybar and the subframe, as shown above.
This setup is much more rigid than I thought it could be, just showing how mounting on two planes for each bracket could stiffen up the assembly. Nice low mounting moves the CG lower, but its more forward than we had hoped - but again, not many places to mount something 24" wide like this.
We have a new pressure accumulator we are using on a couple of other builds in the shop (Masterlube) that is more compact and easier to mount (back corner of the BMW E46 engine bay above), but we didn't find that option for many months after this Accusump was purchased and mounted.
REMOTE OIL FILTER MOUNT + BYPASS + ADAPTER
There are a couple of pieces of the puzzle needed before we can begin plumbing the oil system for this car. The "Summit Racing" oil pan comes with an oil filter mount, but this Canton adapter allows for remote oil filter mount - which we want to do for two reasons.
We later realized we could order this oil pan without the oil filter adapter for a chunk less money, since we weren't using it anyway.
Once that was swapped on we started mocking up oil lines so we could order plumbing - these AN adapters screw right in and will make lines to the remote oil filter easy to run. The remote oil filter allows us to ditch the TINY oil filter made for an LS engine and replacing them with a much larger filter, that has more media and surface area.
continued below