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Announcing the most significant breakthrough in 600 microsprint engine reliability!
The FTZ Microsprint Oil Cooler Package!
Now taking orders on these FTZ Oil Cooler Packages! Ready to
ship!
Adapters available now for all Yamaha 600's
Stainless braided oil lines circulate the oil from the engine to and from
the oil cooler through special made adapters.
These coolers fit very easily in most cars with a nose radiator: we simply
put the cooler in the lower water hose from the radiator to the waterpump.
100% of the cool water passes through this efficient cooler to dramatically drop engine oil temps.
We have ready made oil lines for Stallard and most other chassis's with a front radiatior.
We can also send cut-to-length oil line kits so you can fit your own line to length.
Please advise us what chassis you have, or email us pictures of your water hose routing and
we will help you determine the best mounting location.
Typical R6- front mount radiator Oil Cooler package with lines is $485.
additional adapters are available for your spare motors
Please feel free to call for more details, or to order- 573-334-5439
Protect your investment! with the FTZ OIL COOLER Package.
This is what we have come to consider a "Must Have" for any 4-Stroke Micro Sprint race car. As it turns
out the engine oil in a Micro sprint engine often runs extremely hot, thinning even the best oil to a point that
the already overworked rod bearings can "spin" often resulting in a destroyed motor. This happens on
stock or built motors, and is always a very bad, costly thing. A few hundred dollars here can save you thousands!
We spent most of one season data recording on oil temps at various places inside the engine. The results were downright
scary! We have seen that even if your water temp is only 180 degrees, the oil can be close to 300!! (Think about
it: The water is all is the top end and the oil is mostly all in the bottom.) Because of the load and constant
hi-rpm of this sport it is easy to see the little oil cooler from the street bike is not near enough to keep up.
So we researched the latest, most efficient water/oil heat exchanger available and settled on these laminar flow
units from Europe and made them into a package that fits most popular chassis & micro sprint engines.
We have seen much fewer engine problems since getting our guys on this oil cooler package.
Do NOT let your local engine builder tell you this cooler is not a NECESSITY... IT IS - whether he understands
that or not. Or perhaps he realizes only YOU will profit from this cooler- not HIM...
This is a complete package that comes with top quality braided oil lines and our specific CNC made engine adapter
with AN fittings and sealing washer or O-ring. Standard package fits most cars with front radiator. Let us know if you think
you need something different like longer custom length lines and we can fix you up. We also carry special water
lines that make a more simple and sanitary installation you can easily do yourself in minutes.
*Ask about our latest oil recommendations when you call
in. We have found an oil with the absolute best film strength to protect your engine parts.
*Also ask about our exclusive clutch packages. We discovered even the best racing
clutches are being overloaded in these cars causing slippage, often just enough that the driver cannot feel it.
This of course overheats and trashes the oil with contaminants. We have extra plate clutch kits that increase the
capacity of the clutch 25% or better! Most you can install yourself. Call for details
Do NOT be fooled into thinking that an air-cooled cooler can do the job as well- there is no way. Aside from being
very inefficient, they do not pre-heat the oil, which we determined that many races are started with oil not hot
enough (which also causes damage). We found this can happen regardless of what your water temperature is. We did
not want to settle for anything but the best, most efficient cooler for our engines- why should you settle for
less for yours??
*Email us for shipping quotes to Australia or other places besides the lower 48 >ftzracing at gmail
Save your motor!! Whether you realize it or not, every microsprint
needs this cooler!
And with cooler weather races? this will be a good addition as this intercooler
will also warm up the oil much faster so you don't start the race with oil too cool and thick to circulate.
This is a recent article/ post that we put together and posted:
Oh by the way,
Are you tired of seeing 600 motors with a rod blown out of the block?? I would think so, especially if it happens
to one of yours! This seems to be an all-too-common thing these days, and seems to happen as much to stock and
even restricted motors, as it does to built open motors.
Well, I for one am sick of seeing 600's throw rods- motors built by us, motors built by others, even stockers right
out of the bike. Losing a motor is just plain bad business- bad for the racer, bad for the car owner, bad for the
race tracks, and bad for the sport and 600 class's in general, and certainly bad for the engine builder (who often
gets the blame and suffers damage to his reputation).
So we went to work on this issue very hard this summer. Using high tech data acquisition units with sensors monitoring
and logging oil pressure, oil temperature at different locations plus water temps, rpm, etc. and then carefully
reviewing the files all the while trying different ideas, we have learned a lot things that we just had to just
plain guess at before. The result is we feel we have turned the page on this issue of rod failure in 600 micro
engines.
When a 600 motor throws a rod, it is almost always after it burns a rod bearing. You can't blame the rod or bolts
for failing after the burnt bearing is spit out leaving a 1/8" gap between the rod and journal! This gap will
jackhammer even a $300 Carrillo rod apart in just a few seconds at high rpm. So this tells us that this is actually
a lubrication issue causing these failures. It is up to the film, or "wedge" of oil to prevent metal-to-metal
contact between the rod bearing and the crank journal. If this contact happens under a load, the bearing will be
ruined and failure (burning) will happen soon. Having been aware of this for a good while we have came up with
several good tricks inside the engines to redirect oil flow to critical area's and raise oil pressure, as well
as some new tweaks we are now doing to the rods & bearings to make their life easier. This all helps- as does
our recent upgrading of our oil recommendations. It is foolish not to run the best oils available in these motors.
But which oil is best? While not the subject here, I did study this subject for weeks this summer, and learned
a lot from talking to many oil lab guys and lubrication engineers from several major oil labels. I will tell you
that the top racing oils are usually not found on a shelf at a discount store, or a chain auto parts store. Even
many that are labeled "full synthetic" are now made on cheaper base stocks derived from petroleum. Also
oils used for transportation vehicles have been forced to remove some well proven anti-wear additives to suit the
EPA regulations concerning catalytic converters- even in many motorcycle oils! But there are some very good racing
only, motorcycle oils available. Call Alex at the shop for our latest recommendations.
After all this research we have determined that the biggest contributor to this bearing failure is actually excessive
temperature of the oil during a microsprint race. While data monitoring this, we were surprised to find just how
high these temps got during a race. And that is pretty scary to think about as all oil gets thin like kerosene
when very hot. In a single heat race we saw the oil climb to 75 degrees hotter than the water in just 8 laps! And
the water was cooling down during the race! This told us obviously that the little oil cooler on the front of the
motor (designed only for cruising a bike down the road) is not up to the job when we put these motors in a racecar
and run the crap out of it. This heat is mostly generated from the load on the engine and constant high rpms. So
when you are really hooked up and "flat footin' it", that oil is getting hotter every lap. Think about
it, how many times have you heard: "It was running like a raped ape, right before it blew". The oil temperature
is for the most part unrelated to water temp, or even outside temperature. Think about it, except for the little
cooler on the block, the water just circulates through the top end, not the bottom end. This is also why your water
temp gauge goes up after a race, when all that heat soaks up from the bottom end.
So our solution to this is we have researched various oil coolers, found the very best, most efficient oil/water
intercooler and built a easy-to-install kit around it to adapt it for 600 Microsprint use. We have tooled up and
machined adapters to fit all 600's available. All parts are engineered from an
engine builders point of view, and CNC machined in house-with no compromise in strength or quality. Unlike cheap,
inefficient air-cooled units (which actually need a thermostat valve), this intercooler unit will also help the
water to warm up the oil faster when cold, which can be another problem altogether, especially in the cool weather
ahead.
The results? These things work like crazy- it dropped the one car's oil temp by 40 degrees, the very next week,
at the same track. Travis Senter ran this cooler at his recent win at the I-30 Nationals, and if you saw that race
in person, or on youtube.com, you just can't run an engine much harder than in those Friday and Sat. night 30 &40
lap features. In reading just the differences between the oil pan and oil galley, the cooler was taking a full
35 degrees out of the oil…
I have often said that reliability was just as big a factor as being fast, in our customers winning 9 straight
NMMA National Championships with 600cc motors. (I have also often said that we spoiled the 600 class by building
all those F2's & F3's that ran for 5 or 6 seasons with very few problems.) Today the common thinking is that
these older motors were built heavier, turned less rpm's, and made less power. That is all true- but I have always
had a little problem with that reasoning and often thought: "Yes, but not all that much less." In studying
this I recalled that the F2/F3 motors had a much larger cooler that all the water went through, not just a little
bypass line as with newer engines. This new cooler is several times more efficient than even those on the old F3's.
We feel this is a milestone in 600 Microsprint development, and a very good thing for the entire sport. We think
of it as a cheap insurance policy, and if it saves just one of your motors, or extends its life considerably, then
it will pay for itself many times over. It should even let you stretch out your oil changes.
I will also admit that I hope this cooler will do much to encourage racers to buy, or build the best & fastest
motor, instead of just the cheapest, knowing that it is protected with good oil kept at the proper temperature.
We welcome inquiries on the FTZ oil cooler from all 600 racers, chassis shops as well as other engine builders.
Our phone is 573-334-5439, email is mail@ftzracing.com and web site is always http://www.ftzracing.com
Good Luck to all for the rest of the season,
Jon Fitzpatrick
FTZ Performance, Inc.
www.ftzracing.com
Call us for more details at 573-334-5439 or email us at ftzracing@gmail.com or via GMail
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