I like how you guys actually reply to people trying to assist in the comments, and not claiming you know everything. Much respect. That’s almost unheard of in today’s climate.
Thanks. There is no way to know everything. This is an evolving project with which we aim to learn more. The videos are just a chronicle of what we are doing.
Hmmmm, interesting. Some questions and observations. 1. How is the CFM of air the engine consumes at any given RPM effected by road speed? I was unaware that atmospheric pressure could be influenced by a 300cc SUPER bike. There are several gas laws that contradict that suggestion. 2. Most "man size" road going sports bikes have front facing "Ram-Air" intakes, not only "high end race bikes" but the ram air effect doesn't begin to work until the air entering the airbox is flowing at a greater rate than the engine can consume, and it's consuming shit loads at 12,000 rpm. Only then the kinetic energy is converted into pressure energy, and this MINOR MINOR pressure elevation happens at well north of 100 MPH assuming the airbox is properly engineered for this task. Up until then it is simply a cold air intake. 3. Your clutch is trying to tell you something. 4. With the exception of intake air density 100 deg F air temp will do nothing to your engine, except maybe run slightly rich which, ironically, will cool it. Do you know how hot an engine gets inside a combustion chamber? You do know it's a heat engine right? It will have an impact on the radiator heat transfer capability, but...100F? Really? 5. Evens does boil at a higher temp but has a low specific heat value and will exasperate any over temperature issues you may have. 6. You may want to research compression and it's effect on temperature and look up "what is auto ignition temperature", I don't think you quite have a handle on it. Type Gay-Lussac into Google, unless your aim is to delete the spark plugs and ignition system (see heat engine comment). 7. There is waaay too much carbon on #1 piston, it's trying to tell you something. 8. It might pay to research OEM component materials, you might be surprised what those valves are coated with. Stupid Yamaha enginerds, what would they know lol.
is there no manifold pressure & temperature sensor? if air intake was the issue, then wouldn't you have to drop your rev limit in lower gears? and altitudes?
As I said to Bart in the last video, that is not a melted piston, that damage is mechanical and not heat related. Take an oxy torch to the piston to see what melting pistons look like, you will see a grey ash appearance on it and where it has melted will look like melted plastic, all that carbon would be completely burnt off long before the piston melted and piston melt on the centre unless there is extreme blow by to the edge and you dont have that problem. What you have there is simply a high speed punch that has sheared the metal and bent it similar in appearance to a rod going through a crank case.. Detonation, nope, that occurs at the centre of the piston not the cool edge of the piston and there is no sign of it. The carbon build up is grossly excessive, 6 race days the piston tops should be still quite clean so it look to me mechanic eye that the ring as failed due to excess carbon fouling debris and just mashed the top of the ring land upwards.. Did you over fill the engine oil at all, if not and you are revving the engine higher than stock then you may need to run the engine oil at the lowest level on the oil indicator of dip stick to reduce oil windage in the engine off the crank causing excess to get past the oil rings. OR the oil rings have failed or poorly assembled OR the valve stem oil seals are leaking and those valve stems look very black and oily. Either way the carbon build up is excessive and that black build up is oil up top of the piston, that is what the top of pistons look like in an engine with worn oil rings or valve guide seals after 100,000 kms not 6 race days. I've been a qualified mechanic since 1976 and road raced 2 strokes and 4 strokes 1000 cc superbikes and built more engines than I can count.
Good insight into the issue, i am alway curious about the effects of the high rpms on the water pump and oil flow, whereas the bike was built to be used with much lower rpms, can be modified, i was curious if the high rpms were causing the coolant in the radiator to move too fast not giving the time for the fluid to cool while in the radiator, before returning to the engine, i think the nickel-cil on the cylinder walls will help, i was curious if ceramic coating on the top of the piston is viable, would be nice if there could be a way to instal a high temp camera or make a “cut away” engine for rack mount purposed to observe what the engine is going on the rack at those rpms, agreed there should be that much build up on the piston head, running an engine that hard and then parking it between races, i am curious if they have even a fan on the bike while it is “on break” and checking the starting engine temps before starting back
+Fridgemusa Cant rule that out, if the assembler of the engine failed to check that and ensure there was enough ring end gap. But all being correct the excess carbon build seems to be an obvious fault there that could cause jamming up of the ring.
+Mark All fair points, but I think the cooling system issue he refers to overlooks the real problem here and it is always unwise to make numerous changes to effect a solution while not being sure what the original cause of the fault was, In racing it is just risking introducing some other problem it didn't have before. Using the Evans coolant for example is a bad idea period not just for its questionable properties but the fact if it leaks on the track it could rake a load of other riders down, I don;t know the local regs but in my years of racing all coolant additives were banned due to that issue of them leaking on the track. Likewise putting on a higher pressure rad cap. Likewise the plating of the bore may help with wear but it wont make any difference you'd see in lap times and if it snags a piston / ring that can be costly. This engine has not overheated as far as I can see and looking at heat as an issue is not focusing on the core of the problem here when carbon build up is a pretty obvious problem in this engines case. If they are in doubt about the cooling they can use a thermocouple to monitor temps on the track or dyno at the head and radiator but I'm fairly confident they wont find a fault there. First priority is to fix the oily carbon build up issue and once that is solved then look to any other issues that may remain.
Matt at The Workshop was just trying to give advice. Getting Bart's wife to write a silly email didn't help your cause. I'll keep subscribed but don't be afraid to accept criticism.
^THIS x100. He's a northerner bloke. Have you been to that part of UK, TST industries? they swear a lot up there but it's nothing offensive by any means. I know coz I've lived there for 3 years. And I'm originally from South East Asia. you'll get used to the colourful language. Matt have tonnes of knowledge and experiences. Make good use of him.
We have not been to that part of the UK and appreciate the information and criticism he provided. However, much of it was lost over the name-calling and insults. Although it may have been lighthearted or "colorful", as a company we have to take a professional and safe standpoint to every situation. Barts wife went out on her own and sent that email as she was a little hurt. She and Bart founded and ran this company for years and to see someone seemingly insult him, it hit a nerve with her. Bart is a great man and even better company owner, boss, and all around good guy - we all are here. Had the "colorful" language been left out of his comments and videos, we would have gladly responded and thanked him for the insight. We wish him the best in the future. Much love from all of us at TST to you both!
@Xpanco We are, which is why we mentioned we appreciate the information. We just didn't address him directly on his video. We're also exploring other possible causes. Relax buddy.
No, before now we did not use Evans. We were going to try it but I read up on it and it is pure glycol based so that is out. We can't use that on the track.
Engine temps are high, wet clutch, high rpms, oil is the transmission fluid.. so oil cooler is the answer to bring temps down, higher radiator cap pressure and consider looking at what increase of coolant flow is at 12k rpm and consider having the coolant pump slower or to reach a point where the coolant has time to cool in the radiator, if this happy medium cannot be found, bigger volume radiator could be the solution, love the vids and apply many mods on my R3, looking for to video 22, and the release of the aluminum triple tree for my R3 and the integrated programmable tail light for my ninja 400, Keep up the great work
Mark Nasia thanks man. I appreciate your input. We will have to do some tests with temperature probes before the block and after to find out if the bike wants lower flow or higher for better cooling. The one issue I already see is the small volume of the cooling system. If we can have more volume of fluid circulating our job would be made much easier. We have to cool down the oil too. It will help scrub more heat off motor components, gears in the tranny, and help with maybe preserving the clutch a bit more
I’m not questioning ur knowledge but I would be looking at some on track individual cylinder data logging , injector flow testing and possibly knock sensor logging that doesn’t just look like heat to me
I really enjoy you're folks content and knowledge you share, especially with this build. Loving the R3 superbike racing series. All the best to your team the rest of the season. Blessings from your Northern neighbor.
@@TSTindustries Evans is a con and if you have any engine problems it will allow them to get worse without giving you warning like you would get from normal water coolant mix
We considered that but went a different route in the end. We nikasil plated the cylinder bores and now have good results. The bike is now pushing 53 hp and 25 ft-lb of torque
@@TSTindustries yeah I saw that but I'm sure there is a type of ceramic based almost like anodized coating that can be put on the pistons top face to resist heat soaking the piston as much from combustion. It can be a thousand degrees on one side and the underside of piston is cold to the touch. I think it was originally used on spaceship parts but now can get for motorsport and other applications.
I have seen that you talk about modifying cylinders, connecting rods and more things about the motorcycle but I understand that the ssp / 300 does not allow those changes or carry the head or braced it is legal in its championship or it is allowed for the ssp 300 world championship
The national supersport series based on FIM SS rules does not allow most modifications that we made to this bike. The series that we chose to race these highly modified bikes in have classes for Moto3 and 300cc SB so we are free to modify per their technical specs.
Yep, R3/R25 is should have individual tunings, i have set my CO ( i dont what internationally called it, its kind of adjusting fuel supply in oem ecu ) on my R25 and its quite different on each bank cylinder
He built a really highly strung engine and it blew up within a week and he doesn't know why he says he does but I don't believe him but he is very happy with the results.
TSTindustries ahhh I'm sorry I thought this was a road racing engine not a drag engine, I stand corrected. So does your 50 hp engine break down the molecular structure of the oil like a top fuel drag engine too?
DiAsil is not a coating. The cylinders are die cast using roughly 20% silicon content aluminum alloy. Then the bores are final machined. This is a step up from the traditional cast cylinders but still a step below Nikasil plated bores.
Avneesh Singh Tomar I was just scrolling through comments and thought of spamming you. 😋 It's awesome to see a fellow Indian interested in this kind of deep stuff.
Amaey Paradkar Amaey Paradkar You obviously could have done that.... 😂 Actually in whole video he's like , it's good, it's ok, it's in great condition, even the melted piston is in the category of "it happens" 😂 Only new thing he probably gonna do for the next engine is Nikasil coating.... And according to him results may change after it. So, will be waiting.... But yea, not all but almost all our Indian Superbike Fanboys are happy watching some rich kids doing their flybys and (their) daily rides. There's nothing new there, everyday they come up with a fuckingly irritating "review" and "experience" on their age old bikes and our kids be like "WOW". And I can't even hide those stupid Recommendations. The other day I was watching Brock Davidson turning his H2 into H2R with just 4000$ of bolt on accessorie (21,000$ Less). 😉 Will own a superbike someday, these posters on my wall for two decades will be reality then....
Avneesh Singh Tomar Hehehe... I partly have to agree. From my past experience/interactions with SBK owners they are 90% clueless about what's going on. And by spamming I meant that you check my channel out. 😋 And drop a like/dislike etc. I am sure you would be my worthy viewer.
DiaSil is not a coating actually. It is a process that Yamaha developed through which they are able to cast high silicon content aluminum alloy. We bore through the cylinder surface and ensure proper concentricity, then plate the surface. The bore again to achieve the tolerances we are specifying for a particular build. Then hone and assemble.
It's the firing order that messes AFR up. There's no way to tune it out completely ... just calibrate fuel and spark for each cylinder. Ditch the Dynojet ... that's one of your problems. Finish calibrating on the track. The black piston shows you have fuel flow issues in the cylinder. If cylinder #1 had fuel flow issues, like you hypothesized, it would have carbon too. Higher AFR may lower EGT, but there's MORE heat (fuel is energy). fyi, detonation does not occur in an engine. It's "autoignition". aka pre-ignition. 200psig cranking pressure will tolerate pump gas. 220 is nothing for race gas.
I have spare engines, parts, factory race kits, all sorts of stuff. Come down and build a motor and we will go have fun seeing if it will continue living or if we can kill it
The heat took the carbon off the piston? couple of questions - if it 'was a heat problem' how did the carbon build up in the first place to be the same as the other piston before this sudden 'heat-event' that 'took the carbon off? secondly why dod you assume that because there was no carbon on the piston it was a heat problem? Generally with a cylinder that is overheating the carbon remains but changes colour to a lighter shade. Anyway good luck
like bearings, rods, and pistons/rings all in one kit? I have not seen that. Best pistons available currently for these bikes come from GYTR. The most robust rods come from Carrillo. Bearings and rings are sourced from OE dealer network.
Two separate topics. One is not consequent of the other. Did we want to raise compression....YESSSSS. Why not make more torque? Did we want to figure out why the piston failed and correct it....YESSSS. We did both on separate occasions. At this point we are squeezing 53 horse out of the motor and have further reduced the mass of the bike. At the Daytona Raceway season opener event this last weekend the bike went 3 sec/lap faster than any other machine on the field in moto3 qualifying.
What radiator are you guys using? Going from a stock radiator on my race bike to a PWR racing radiator (full Alu, 10mm thicker) temps dropped substantially... Also only allowed to run straight water on race bikes over here in Aus, interesting to know what coolant you're going from and the results from the Evans.
MrObmerb we have used engine ice in the past. We are trying Evans next. I will look into that radiator but oil cooler will have to be done too since we have more stuff going on
We have tried other additives that contain a surfacant and anti-corrosion components. Mocool is a similar product. I have done some reading into Evans, and the good stuff with a high boiling point is all glycol. We won't be able to use that stuff. Back to searching for the juice that will go in the cooling system, but your suggestion is now at the top of my list.
TSTindustries the 'good stuff' with 'high boiling point' ? Evans isnt good and a higher boiling point doesnt cool better. Water is the good stuff. Evans is trash marketing.
The blocks were taken up by an R6 crank that was being worked on. The R3 crank was not being worked on at the time of the video so for demonstration purposes it could have been rested on the non-critical surfaces.
We are getting ready to procure and install a data acquisition setup to better monitor what is happening and have true data for the next time we blow this thing up. By next season we should arrive at a setup that is strong, competitive, and has good longevity. Some other teams we race against have built R3 superbike motors that have slightly less power than ours, and they are getting only three events out of them before they blow them up. I think we are onto something here. We may blow it all up with more compression but it's the only way to know.
Great!! And the only way to improve something is to test it out. Higher compression can destroy the engine especially with ram air, because the air is pushed into the chamber, making the compression higher. One way to lessen the impact is just cooling. Sadly, antifreeze does not really absorb heat that much, but has a high boiling point. Enlargement of the coolant lines, including the wet liner helps. Increasing the pump pressure sure does work like a charm, but you would need to make sure the lines are strong enough to sustain the high-rev operation. One more thing: the piston warp I saw at the video seems to be caused by the piston ring. As metals expand at elevated temperatures, the ring expands too, until the ends meet. They meet, and the metal continues to expand further, so it breaks the aluminum piston which is holding it in.
We will be making one soon. We had a long road back from the last failure, further complicated by a lot of regular business work stacking up because we are at the peak of our season. Don't worry, we will keep making them.
Good content, giving me some things to think about. What do you think about anodizing the pistons? Wiseco has their special process, but it's really just anodize and probably a cold/hard anodize. I thought about doing this in my little KAYO MR125 when I put the 13:1 piston in it, but ran out of time and had to get it running. Next piston I'll probably try anodizing the whole thing, or at least the crown. Also, I didn't see any dimples in the intake ports, are the injectors so close to the valves that there is no value? If you have some time, take a look at the stuff on my website (linked to this account), the KAYO is in a modified class so I can do pretty much anything as long as the displacement stays the same. The Z125 in the videos is a stock class, not going to be able to do much to it. Anyway, thanks for explaining what you were doing, and why you were doing it. Stuff like this has a lot of value to me!
You can throw the entire kitchen sink at a 125 and it will not make any noticeable difference and surely not a 10% power increase, just look at the smallest turbo it requires at least a 250cc engine just to get it to spool, and even then you're losing money compared to what jumping to a 500-600 engine would net you.
Evans coolant is a poor choice. Commercial bikes are not designed to run that stuff period. Unless using a billet heat treated cylinder and cylinder head (and lets be honest, who can afford that?), stock cast alloy will not take the heat from higher compression, possible more fuel and the higher boiling point of evans coolant, in the long run. You introduce another unknown variable. You want cooling efficiency NOT a higher coolant boiling point because the cast alloy is not going to take that.
A lot of research and calculation went into the decision for current setup. Evans was what we wanted to run if we could fit an oil cooler on the bike but that has proven to be a challenge that can only be overcome if we design a dedicated oil cooler. So we stepped away from that. What we have now is a Nikasil played cylinder block, water with surfacant for coolant, and a 1.8 bar rad cap. We did not finish setting up the new decked head yet so it's not on the motor. We will test that after Daytona in the next motor configuration.
@@TSTindustries I would run a small oil cooler, you can fit it pretty much anywhere, doesn't need to be an actual core, even a length of coiled copper pipe should do the job. If your clutch plates are that hot after only few runs, could be from the oil breaking down from high temperature as well. Regarding piston damage, looks like human error to me.
I still want to pursue the oil cooler development, it will just have to wait. I need to ride this thing soon. We will revisit the oil cooler after the Daytona National event. As for the piston, well the only mechanical contribution we can figure is the ring gap, and that was set to specifications. The specs were defined by piston manufacturer, but this manufacturer couldn't have taken into consideration the extensive nature of our setup. Heat causes the components to expand. The rings expand too, and possibly touch ends. I think we were too "set on kill" with our mixture, and that contributed to hotter than usual operating temps. The rings expanded, caused more friction than usual, then that caused more heat, and the vicious cycle went on. There is no way to pinpoint one area of concern only so we developed a model of failure that we were able to believe, and tried to remedy as many of the parameters that we felt contributed as possible. We are now ready to test what we prepared so the next video will show just that. I appreciate your input. Keep it coming.
What ever happened to this project? I'm guessing a 50HP R3 is not realistically viable for anyone but racers with big budgets and full access to a workshop and professionals
We got close to 53hp with this one We still run it, though at the moment the motor is out for some work after we blew through the rings again. We just dont have time to keep documenting it on video.
I agree. We had limited time and no way to step tune with the technology we were using. I did decide to leave it leaner than it should have been to be safe. One of the lessons learned.
TSTindustries Where development and/or tuning is involved, we are all in it for the long haul. Nothing any good ever came easy, but in the end, it's always worth the effort
0:57 You give us all the details during the build, and then say that we can work out what caused the piston to melt. Heat obviously, but why so much heat. How about an explanation??? And how come you never showed us the damaged bore? Makes me wonder if you are hiding a dirty little secret. Finally - Evens coolent? Seriously??? You really do want to cook that motor. LMAO
We don't have any secrets on this build project. We aren't selling anything through these videos, they are just chronicles of what we are doing. It's not an educational series, it's just material for interested parties to follow for the sake of entertainment. There is no benefit for us to keep any secrets about our project so I don't know where you are getting this from. Bores were scored up a bit but not to the point that plating them couldn't fix them...so we got them plated and the motor is now back together.
Ok, fair enough on the bores. I get that you needed to send them out for repairs before you had time to do the vid. Early vids gave heaps of info and detail, but you kinda copped out on an explanation for the melted piston. No, I can't figure out why there was so much heat, and would be interested to know. Some comments from people who seem to know their stuff are even suggesting it might no be a heat issue at all. Lastly, why would you use Evens coolent? It has poor thermal heat capacity. If heat was the issue, Evens won't help. It will exacerbate the problem.
Earlier in the season we had more time to arrange for shooting the material. As the season progressed, and our entire company got more and more busy with actual work that keeps our doors open, shifting work time towards documenting this project got more difficult. We do our best with what we've got, sometimes it just yields an episode that is less comprehensive than others. We were not logging any engine parameters at the time of the failure so having concrete data on what the actual cause(s) were is not possible. Hanging our hats on one explanation would be daring to say the least. The problem is so multi-dimensional that we just have to approach it by setting up a matrix of possible contributing factors, arranging them in order of probability. Then debunk the ones we find evidence against, and address the ones we can. Heat was an issue here. When a piston material softens and deflects like dough it is pretty apparent that heat caused that. Finding all the sources of all that heat not being passed into the cylinder walls and then cooling system is going to take some experimentation. We have a team of people working on this and we will share our findings when we arrive at something we are confident in. The idea of using a very high boiling point coolant was to take phase transition cavitation out of the equation. We have since adapted a different approach with some system revisions that should provide the results we need using water+surfacant at a higher system pressure.
![Assessing the Damage on our R3 Supebike Motor [Superbike Build Series Ep.21]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
