Edit: Fundraiser is closed, thanks for all the support! Thanks for the continued interest and support. If you would like to contribute toward the replacement engine, the fundraising page is here: www.paypal.com/pools/c/8XYJLvG3MZ And I’ve posted a detailed cost breakdown here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_HvPa6sfSDj_yXMbfTtUp7lm3tF0ChB792QI1laidQ0/ This last test was a tricky one, but I’m looking forward to getting back on the road and doing more tracking and testing in the future.
hey for what its worth, BlackstoneLabs said this about my oil sample "Bearing wear in this engine will show up as excessive aluminum (along with copper and tin, presumably)". this was a 2023 GR86
always loved verus engineering, but great to hear they are as awesome as their products are! quality guys for offering to help you without being pressured!!
Thanks for all the objective research! Good to see data being developed for this engine. I use mine mostly for canyon runs out here in Utah but the track data is worth it's weight in gold. Also great to see that Verus is being a stand up company and covering the engine.
To paraphrase Edison, you just found one of the 10000 ways that it doesn't work. I'm really happy to hear the silver lining to this saga and there are other verticals to explore in making this engine hold up to its promises. Hope that replacement and break-in period ends soon so we can see you out on the track again!
Wow... that's a bummer. But what a class act all around. Super impressed with Verus for stepping up to cover the cost of the engine replacement, super impressed with how you handled it. I was wondering why we hadn't seen results for so long and now it makes total sense. Unfortunately, looks like the vertical baffle idea is not quite as straightforward of a solution as we might have guessed based on this video and BTR Justin's latest test of the Kazama baffle. Really hope a non-invasive solution can be found... I definitely don't love the idea of adding an accumulator to my daily. Thanks again for all the hard work and testing.
Thank you, really appreciate that. Yeah this was definitely the toughest video to make of the series. Feel like we did learn a lot though, with the overfill doing more than most of the baffles we’ve seen. We do need to pressure test that against faster drivers, but it’s also a super easy test to conduct, so that’s good news. At least feels like we’re getting closer.
Thank you for spearheading this research! While I don't own a GR86 currently, the work you are doing will hopefully allow enthusiasts to enjoy these cars for decades to come. Glad that awesome companies like Verus are willing to assist as well
Dang... unfortunate that you had a prototype failure but good on Verus for covering the costs, that is awesome of them. Thanks for doing all of these tests and publishing your data.
Incredible work from all parties involved. Very sorry to hear about what happened with the engine! I wonder: would modifying or extending the oil pickup be possible to test or even help at all? Like a longer straw in a Super Big Gulp!
Thank so much for the donation. Paired with a deeper pan I think that would be helpful, but it’s an engine out job to replace the pickup unfortunately, since the timing cover needs to be removed to access the fasteners on this engine. I don’t know why that made that change. With FA20, you could swap the pickup just by taking off the oil pan. I think a wider pan at the same depth is the way to go for increased sump capacity.
@@900BRZwide oil pan idea, I have an ‘02 WRX with a ~ flat bottom pan stock. I’ve seen a couple videos where the Sti developed a more v shape pan so oil won’t slosh out beyond the oil pickup under lateral g loads. It would be interesting to get a camera view of oil movement in a pan on track. Maybe there’s a computer simulation that could do it? Looks like the old WRX had two horizontal baffles to prevent up slosh at two levels . I did one track day with the WRX. When the engine was torn down much later after a burned exhaust valve @176k miles there was one rod bearing that had gone through 2-3 layers. Might have been the track day, or repeated right turn on ramps :) Sorry for the catastrophic oil pressure loss while supporting the community! You could probably make an oil pan with a camera that is bolted somewhere else in the car, experiencing the same or similar g forces to see how oil behaves? It also might be interesting if a swinging pickup could follow the oil :) reliably.
From what I've seen I think the distance of the pickup from the pan may be too conservative. I've not measured it with clay. I wonder if anyone has? I think the vertical baffle with trap door holds great promise. I'll say more on that elsewhere.
You’re a lifesaver for this. You’re a pioneer and have a wealth of knowledge that we appreciate. Also, great on Verus for being a great company, definitely will donate!
Thanks for your thorough research and well presented results. I really appreciate your rigorous method, it stands out from a lot of other content on this platform as well as a lot of other information about these cars.
The reason I took the Accusump off my '23 86 was exactly what the data is showing - it smooths out the peaks, but it's running lower oil pressure at WOT when it's filling the accumulator back up. If it would normally be at 75 PSI, it's now only getting ~60ish PSI to the system since it's feeding a large tank. Leaving the pits with the hot oil idling around 14 PSI and then going WOT to enter the track, I wasn't comfortable with the "accusump filling" pressure. I think it creates more problems than it solves (I didn't even think about the "pressure relief valve" issue - thanks for including that). I will continue running 1.5 quarts over the high fill line, there are no downsides, even on the street. "Without data it didn't happen" - prove that the overfill actually creates aeration or other downsides, please.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, agree I have no data about the downsides of a large overfill. Since the overfill goes against manufacturer recommendation though, I feel like the burden of proof is to prove there is _no_ downside, rather than assuming it’s safe unless we prove a downside. I was joking what we actually want is a reverse Accusump. We want normal oil levels (charged accumulator) when the RPM is low, but then higher oil levels (empty accumulator) when RPM is high and oil return to the sump is the limiting factor. We could probably program that with electronic controls and the solenoid valve, but we need to find a different valve that doesn’t act as a 1-way unpowered.
Curious how the manufacturer could even know that you ran the oil fill level high, unless you brought it in there like that. And if you were worried about the manufacturer, I'm certain you'd take the time to take 1 quart out of it...
What pre charge psi are you running? If you run a higher pre-charge, it'll reduce the oil capacity of the accusump, which will mitigate the low pressure at WOT issue and respond better to small dips. We don't need a lot of sustained assistance from the accusump with this platform.
It’s not so much I’m worried about the manufacturer seeing what I’m doing. It’s more that I just believe deviating from their recommendation needs to be proven safe. And I’m reticent to recommend things publicly that I don’t have evidence are safe when they deviate from factory spec.
As shipped with the recommended oil fill and weight, these things keep popping with light to moderate track use. I think it's safe to assume we can ignore the manufacture's recommendations at this point, which is why you're doing all this testing.
Good on Verus for making it right. And thank you for putting all the blood, sweat, and oil into solving this issue! I'm really curious if the solution winds up being some combination of larger oil sump with baffling built into it. Accusumps seem promising but as you pointed out, very particular about the operation and application. Since the appeal to many people of the GR86 seems to be Dual-Purpose I don't think the Accusump will be the predominate solution several years out, but obviously track focused cars will probably spring for that and or going the overfill route.
Thank you. Yeah I think a high capacity sump would be awesome. I think we can get accusumps to the point where they have similar reliability as an oil cooler, but yeah, still may not be ideal for true dual purpose cars.
I'm going to pick one of these up as soon as I can get my hands on a manual one, so I'm super happy to see people like you, companies like Verus, and all the others that are working on this trying to improve this platform. Thank you for your work and your sacrifices in this, and we all hope we can find a good solution. Hopefully this also pushes Toyota and Subaru to improve the platform and engine to prevent the need for these kinds of mods in the future.
Thank you for the info! I run a 1qt overfill. Mostly a street car application, but I have done one track day. Everything has been great. However, I do notice a lot of oil collection in my Radium catch cans. Also, thank you for testing. Sometimes things happen. I hope no one gets all fired up about the Verus oil baffle. Prototype products are tested, sometimes they work first try, sometimes they dont. No big deal.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, catch cans also mitigate some of the downsides from overfills. I should mention that in the future. I have some KB dual catch cans but haven’t installed them yet. Agree about the risks of R&D. These things happen!
I have been running a one quart+ overfill since day one on the track in my tuned 2022. This, because of my tracking a high-G STI for years with Accusump, KB pan and everything else... running 285 Hoosiers. No bearing failures with my 470 HP car in about 60 hours. With the BRZ, depending on how I park and paddock slope, I get some smoke when I first start the engine. No A/OS. I now have many track days from two seasons on the car. My oil pressures are great. About to do a UOA. I run 5W-40 Motul 300V. I have "Track Day" videos here under my name Glyn Churchman. I am turning very respectable laps in the car.
I'm not sure about the oil pump specs on this engine, but Subaru uses very high flow oil pumps in general. The oil pump in the turbo FA20 in my WRX is rated at 60 L/min at 6700 rpm, and has a 6 L total capacity (at rebuild), which amounts to the entire oil capacity circulating in only 6 seconds. With these high flow rates, oil return time could be an issue, as could foaming. Using a thicker grade of oil would have the benefit of reducing oil flow rates to the engine once the oil pump's bypass activates at a certain pressure at high rpm. Based on your videos, this engine's oil pump starts bypassing well before redline when the oil pressure stops increasing. Once the oil pump starts bypassing, a thicker oil will result in more oil bypassing and reduced flow to the engine. A lower oil flow rate to the engine will leave more oil in the sump. Installing another oil cooler to reduce oil temperature would have a similar effect. Thinner oil may flow back to the sump a bit better, so it's hard to say definitively if there would be a benefit, but it might be something you could test. If you're concerned about foaming, especially with the overfill, you could try to use an oil with lower potential for foaming. All API oils are tested to ASTM D892 for foaming. The results of these tests aren't usually published, but you could try contacting the manufacturer. API CK-4 diesel engine oils have more stringent limits for foaming (40% of the limit that is allowed for API SP gasoline engine oils in the high temperature foaming test).
Great insights, thanks so much for commenting. I’ve heard mixed things about the flow rate. The FA24 oil pumps are very similar to the FA20s, so they also have high bench tested flow rates. Chris from Killer B said that the real-world flow rates are significantly lower than on the bench, but I’m not sure why this would be unless it’s sucking air. We know that’s the case sometimes, but I wouldn’t expect it all the time. Maybe he meant that the flow rates are lower to the engine due to the bypass valve. Overall, we agree that the success of the large overflow points to insufficient oil return and so we’re probably dealing with low oil levels in the sump. There’s probably not enough oil to control effectively with baffles, no matter the design. This is a pretty big learning and will change the direction of our research. We’re now looking to see if we can measure oil level in the sump at high RPM. Those tests should be doable with the car stationary in neutral, which should make them easier to conduct. I’ll do some research about anti-foaming. That’s all new to me. Thanks so much!
As an owner of a GR86 with about a dozen track days on, this info is greatly appreciated. I know the oil pick line is fixed above the timing cover, but maybe a part could be fixed to the bottom to increase oil pick up. The owner of PittRace has a Viper and his son was one of the head engineers for the Viper project. I was talking to some of his folks that tested Vipers at the track and they engineered around oil starvation with an articulated oil pan and a swinging oil suction line, they could not do dry because of costs. You can find a couple of videos on it if interested. I wonder if we could get a modification for something similar? We are a bit tighter under the engine as well.
Thanks for the donation! Yeah I’ve heard about various articulating pickups, but I’m hoping we can figure out simpler solutions. Even just swapping the pickup is an engine out job on FA24, like you alluded to. The large overfill having such a positive effect is really interesting. It shows that potentially controlling the oil is less important than just having more of it in the sump at high RPM.
@@900BRZ indeed. Even if I have to buy a $15 1L syringe to pull it out at the end of a track day would make it the easiest and cheapest solution! I’ve put about 0.5-0.75 overfill every track day, change oil out to spec full fill the next day after track days.
Mechanical eng here as well, considering to buy one of these cars. Your videos helped me decide to move forward getting it and bust some of the other videos of people saying don't buy it. Not planning to track it soon, but your info provided me with amazing insight of what is going on and be more confident of the reliability of the car as a daily driver. Amazing content! Thanks!
Thanks for doing all this testing! As someone who's dealt with multiple engine failures on the prior gen car from oiling, my takeaway is that accumulators work incredibly well to bandaid the poor oiling design of these boxer engines. However as you've pointed out, they come with many disadvantages that are difficult to manage - especially when your cold idle is 140psi and hot idle is 15psi, and you want to maintain 60psi in your powerband rpm. The tactic to use is to have both a manual valve and an electronic valve. Manual valve acts as a hard shutoff for all times except track sessions, and you only open it when your oil is warmed up in the paddock. This avoids any leaks like your friend experienced from cold starts. Then you flick the electronic valve open as you head out of the pits and your rpm is above 3-4k, enabling the engine to build enough oil pressure to not have the accusump dump all the oil into your pan at idle. It acts effectively as a damper to oil pressure oscillations, with the block port being directly in the main oil gallery in front of the main bearings, which is the best place it can be. When you come back into the pits, flick the electronic valve off while your RPMs are still high, to keep the oil in the accumulator. This is a pain-in-the-butt procedure. So I'm VERY much looking forward to a test of higher capacity pans and baffles to see if that can effectively dampen the pressure drops, WITHOUT all the operational challenges of accumulators. Best of luck with your new engine fitting
Yeah using both valves is interesting. I don’t love the additional complexity, but I have also come around on accumulators in general, so-who knows-maybe that will change as I learn more. We still do believe we can hook up with electronic valve to the CAN bus system so we could make the electronic valve activate automatically based on whatever inputs we want. The manual valve would be a good failsafe and completely disconnect the system for daily driving, which sounds good.
@@900BRZ If you're running a standalone you can do all sorts of clever stuff such as open the valve only when temp>90C, rpm>3000. I'm happy with ecutek on a stock ECU so have never gone that route. One point to note: with an accumulator make sure you have a large sized AOS or large catch can with a drain back. With crank aereation from overfilling you can end with a lot of oil in your intake tract if you don't have this.
Thank you very much again for all the testing done. Really highly appreciate all your effort put into this. Like most owner, we will be dual purposing their GR86/BRZ (mostly daily drive + occasional track). So accumulator might not be the ideal solution as you mentioned. Looking forward to much simpler straight forward solution such as baffle / baffled oil pan / redesign larger oil pan. Again thank you very much, cant stress it how much we appreciate what you have done here. Millions thanks. Keep up the good work 💪
Thanks so much. Yeah, if we can repeatedly show that a large overfill (potentially plus SYMS baffle) works on track, that would be huge. Extracting at the end of the day is tedious, but straightforward and means there are no added failure points.
Sorry to hear. But I absolutely love the initiative you have taken to come up with an engineering solution for this problem. Such a shame that you haven't received any direct support from Toyota! You are literally doing free data acquisition for their product. Glad to know Verus is a company that recognizes this.
Thank you! Yeah would be great to work directly with Subaru or Toyota but I just don’t see it happening at this point. I’m here if they want to find me. Very appreciative of Verus for their collaboration and support.
Dude, you are doing a great work, even the companies working with you are respectable one's. Any owner I'm sure should buy anything you conclude to buy.
Ah man that’s a tough one! Glad to see Verus stepping up and supporting you, that’s epic. If there is a “silver lining” to the bad situation, the fact that you had to drop to zero oil pressure for what seemed like an eternity before the bearing had enough just goes to show what must have happened for the other engines that failed to let. Yes repeated low pressure events will add additional wear over time but majority of the failures happened at an early stage, which definitely points to other factors such as extreme oil temps or perhaps low levels for the other failures.
Thank you, and full credit to Verus for being so good to work with. Yeah we don’t really know exactly what point the bearing damage got to a critical level, since there is a lot of wind noise. The mic in the car is on the rear bumper, so it was actually louder to me than the video picks up. But unlike some other failures I know about, I was also lucky to not throw a rod out of the block or anything like that. Could have been a lot messier and ruined the session for everyone else. This failure also changed my mind about the OE pressure switch being useless. In theory, if I had learned about the pressure drop earlier, I may have been able to save the engine. I’m looking at programming our instrumentation to warn at sub 10 psi-so more aggressive than the factory switch at sub 3 psi.
Thanks for the response. My point was more that for a catastrophic failure to occur something drastic has to happen, like total loss of oil pressure for an extended period of time. Engines haven’t failed because they “only” experienced a drop in pressure, likely those other instances was a combination of factors. Obviously I’m not saying the pressure drops on right handers isn’t an issue, of course it is. I’m just saying that based on what it took for your engine to fail indicates that it takes some extreme situations for total failure to occur, since your engine had already survived numerous pressure drop events that prior to and during testing. Clearly the use of a higher viscosity quality oil and oil cooler did their job under those conditions. Thanks again for your transparency and commitment.
Yeah that makes sense to me. Hopefully we can get enough people data logging that we will be able to see data in the future from “typical” failures and learn more about why it’s happening. For now we can only try to reduce the drops since that’s what we can measure.
awesome video as usual. great on Verus for working with you so closely, i think your series really highlights the kinds of companies we should want to work with
What are you talking about. There is no severe oversight here. 900brz is doing som r&d and smoked his car in the process. That wasn't Toyota and Subaru's fault. There is an inherent risk racing and track your car. Everyone knows that. This is not a Toyota/Subaru thing. I have seen Mazdas, BWMs and Hondas blow up on the track. Here, we are simply working on solutions to make our cars more resilient on track under heavy loads.
@@Julianklaus selling cars that come with a year of NASA membership, intended for safe track use with potentially catastrophic oiling issues (RTV + pickup issues)
sorry to hear that news, in japan on GR86/BRZ race, transmission broke more than engine i heard, anyway I'm one of owner of ZD8 BRZ, i want modify my car but i still injured my right legs, love to see each youtuber doing own modify, keep going man,
Damn! Sad to see the engine go but glad to see it wasn't a typical failure! I hope you, working with other companies, find a good solution soon! I'm lookin to install whatever works on my brz.
Again, great video, I can’t get enough of your geeky approach. What a shame of your car, but on the other hand… no risk, no results. And it’s great that they took the responsibility of this failure, there are not many companies which would do it, so tumbs up! You also mentioned you are going to do standard brake-in procedure, could you please write how to do it properly? I have gr86, and now im in the 4k rpm limit phase until 1600km (1000miles), but what then?
Thank you! Agree, props to Verus for how they’re handling this. Speaks to their integrity. For break-in, people have strong-held opinions on whether to send it right away or follow the owner’s manual. I plan to follow the manual and then change motor oil at 1000 miles. In your case, you’ll also be breaking in your transmission and diff. It’s a good idea to change the diff oil and transmission gear oil too. There will be an increased amount of metal on the magnets on the drain plugs during the break-in period. When I changed mine the first time, there was so much it seemed like there wasn’t really room for any more metal to accumulate there. I didn’t do it right at 1000 miles, but I would recommend doing it at 1k.
@@900BRZ thank you very much :) I will definitely change oil in transmission and diff! And what would you do after that? Slowly increase the limit of RPM or immediately set the limit to 7k?
Wow, very sorry to hear about this happen! Thank you for all your work. Was the engine easy to source? Are you able to let us know the MSRP of a new engine ?
Thank you. Yes the engines are actually very easy to source. We were able to get a complete engine from a dealer for around $8,000. We decided to go that route vs a short block rebuild because it reduces labor cost and, most importantly, risk. Junkyard engines are going for $6-7k, so at that point a brand new engine just makes more sense.
Oh man, bummer. I've been following along because I would like to track an FA24 86/BRZ but not at the risk of catastrophic failure! Good luck with the engine replacement and looking forward to continuing to this seeing issue closed out!
Terrible luck, I completely understand the assumption that reading zero was a sensor failure without seeing an oil slick behind you. Prototyping is treacherous. Keep up the good work.
I guess the best option , after all these tests , is to use the STI pan with baffle (engineered by themselves with huge know-how and budget) , and overfill. A super useful test would be to have a camera that looks what happens inside the pan… Almost impossible I guess , but would remove any doubts .
We’re thinking about how to use a camera or other testing methods to better understand how the oil level changes as a function of RPM (i.e. pump speed). GR Cup cars don’t use an STI pan/baffle. The best we’ve actually tested is the SYMS pan if you’re looking for something to get right now.
A camera won't see anything. It is a mess in the crankcase. I worked at a race shop and in the past they put windows in V8 racing oil pans and did didn't reveal much. Perhaps oil level sight tubes external to the pan with cameras watching may be revealing. Love the work you guys are doing and I don't even own these cars. Good luck.
Ive ran an Accusump on my turbo frs since 2015 (no baffles) and it's been great. However I do not open the manual valve until I'm entering the track and close the valve on my cooldown to prevent it from overfilling the pan.
Yeah I think cable operated makes a lot of sense. Think this is a pretty good plan. How did you route the cable? The cable from Canton is only 6 ft long. I don’t think that’s long enough to run through the firewall port on the passenger side.
Really sorry to hear this happened, I was very hopeful we finally had a "simple" fix for this issue. At this point I'm hoping a header/pan redesign comes directly from Subaru.
Yeah, agree Subaru/Toyota should do something about it. But we have some hope about potentially there being relatively simple mitigations, with the big overfill being promising. Just need more testing to sort it all out.
@@900BRZ I actually just got the GJP sensor kit and was planning on adding some data to the pile. While I'm kind of hesitant to add that much oil I'd be more than happy to run some scenarios. I think my next track day is end of October.
Hey man. I am glad to see verus is ready and willing to help cover the costs of a new engine. That's really unfortunate! But hey! We're looking forward to the rebuild n testing of newer and better solutions. Looking at the accusump and the 2 quart sump doesn't seem like a bad deal. The valve was a concern. But there is more positive than negative and so I will be purchasing the accusump soon as well. I need an oil pressure sensor as well to monitor my pressures. Once this is hardware comes in, I'll give you an update on how things go. Should have all this setup by December. But that's just cuz money is an issue. But anything to help out with testing. Anyways! You've been a great help for us. And I'm glad to see there are drivers like you that are ready and willing to help the community. Again, unfortunate you got rod knock, but good luck with the rebuild. I'll try to help out when I can.
Thank you. We are currently looking at the 1.5 qt Moroso accumulator instead of the Accusump, since it omits the pressure relief valve altogether. You should give it a look too. We’re not sure the lower capacity will be sufficient, but Miles was also using a higher-than-spec air-side pressure, which reduced the effective capacity of his 3 qt Accusump. Good luck and feel free to message me on IG if you want to discuss further.
A reduction in oil pressure is most likely a restriction in available oil at the oil pump inlet AND/OR the available oil is highly aerated (can we say foamy). Assuming the oil pump flow rate (GPM) and the sump volume is great enough to permit an adequate sump "dwell" time (in the aerospace industry we aim for 15 seconds to de-aerate the aerospace oil) for the entrained air to leave the oil, we must also have adequate oil return back into the sump. Perhaps the issue is with the 2.4's oil system drain back/oil return design restricts the oil from leaving the left cylinder head in a timely manner (and to de-aerate) before the pump picks it back up. As a retired aerospace engineer (on multiple jet engines and pressurized gearboxes), Subaru needs to be addressing these two apparent design deficiencies when track driven - but is an OK design to get your cup of latte or idling while your seat heater is on.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, after we saw the bigger overfill have such a large improvement it changed our thinking from trying to control oil in the sump to believing that the return is too slow and the oil level in the sump is just too low in general. We’re thinking about ways to test this theory now. We should be able to run this test with the car in neutral and just reving up to 6000+. If you have any ideas for measuring oil level in the sump, we’re open. We’ve thought about adding a Hall effect sensor from bmw to the bottom of the pan, borescope, or trying to rig up an external tube to observe the level.
It appears the "dynamic" oil level (oil level with the engine running and circulating the oil) is low enough when cornering hard to allow the oil pump inlet to start drawing air in with the oil. If you can envision a 1g vertical pull from gravity added to at least 1g of lateral g while cornering, any oil is going to pile up in the side of the sump like an approximate 45 degree angle. If you have an uninstalled sump, you could put enough fluid to simulate the dynamic oil level and check for the intersection of the 45 degree line with the pump in let. Some aerospace applications (for negative g operation in the T-56) will utilize a movable oil pump inlet which flows the "g field". Developing aerospace systems typically mean a much larger budget to work with. Not sure if CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software has come down in price (and if oil viscosity can be properly representative) to do "modeling" prior to cutting metal. Perhaps if you have a scrap oil pan (or make a translucent plastic pan) and a video camera, you could (safely!) raise the right side of the car to simulate high g cornering and watch when the oil level drops as it gets trapped somewhere in the left of centerline of the engine. We would normally use thermal couples all over with manometer pressure taps too to check for oil churning (trapped oil) that isn't returning to the sump fast enough. Did my rambling give you some ideas to move forward with? Very respectfully, Charles.@@900BRZ
this sucks, my FA20DIT failed for a similar reason, Subaru technicians put far too much silicon during a timing cover seal repair. Unfortunately for me Subaru South Africa will not pay. I am glad that Verus sorted you out though, it sucks losing an engine.
Tough luck with the baffle and engine failure :( Good on Verus though to not leave you hanging! Do you know which Canton valve part # Miles used? I was thinking of testing one of the switched ones, possibly the 35-40psi valve. Thanks for the sharing the info on the issues he had. Also interesting was the results of the large oil over fill!
Thank you! I was just talking with Miles about this last night. All the Canton EPC valves are the same, but the pressure switch kit change out the switch which changes the position of the valve. He is not using the pressure switch kit at all and is instead switching power with a physical switch in his cabin. He ended up ditching that setup once we realized it was a 1-way valve and instead hard-wired it to power so it was open for the rest of the track day. This would make it similar to a manual valve in the open position, just like Ansix did. Only downside is he had to leave his car idling for the rest of the day to not drain the battery! (And of course, he was running an overfill whenever the car was idling.)
Why switch to 0w-40 oil? I've always been told that oil viscosity is matched to bearing clearences, so it's probably best to stick with 5w-30 on OEM specs. Best of luck with future testing. I hope to see more videos shortly
This is a great question and there have been absolutely endless debates about this. The most compelling argument for 0w40 is that the GR Cup, which uses totally stock motors, runs 5w40. But 5w40 is a lot thicker than 0w20 upon startup, so 0w40 somewhat bridges the gap. Downside is that you'll probably burn more oil and need to replace it more frequently than 5w40. Also, 0w20 is street spec oil. It's almost certainly the optimal oil for daily driving. But track driving is totally different. Oil temps can easily hit 250F even with an oil cooler. 270-280F is possible without. At that temperature, your oil gets a lot thinner. Engines are designed around a certain oil viscosity, not an oil weight. You need your oil to cater to the temperature window the engine operates at.
@404nobrakes Yeah exactly. I’ve seen at 240 deg with 5W-30 and my setup (Jackson Racing air to oil cooler and OE heat exchanger) I’m getting down to ~50 psi. Would like to maintain closer to 60 psi and the higher viscosity oil should help achieve that.
@@900BRZ makes sense, although I have also heard the temps will just be higher yet with thicker oil due to the increased effort to pump it around, be interesting to see how it treats you
@404nobrakes Personally, I switched to 10w40 from 5w30 in my H22 to see if it would reduce oil consumption and it did. Burned half the oil with 10w40. Then I rebuilt the engine and no consumption any more, running strictly 5w30 again
@@bb1ben there's been plenty of demonstrations with 40 weight. I think @NoStreetRacing86 and Track and Build have videos about it. So does ansix auto. Increasing oil weight doesn't increase temp that much once you're in the correct viscosity operating window. It does increase in temperature more quickly when you're below the operating window because more viscosity = more heat.
The japanese know something we don't because there are zero cases of GR86/BRZ engine issues reported there. Also, I have been using their recommendation sheets for their BRZ/GR86 cup cars when modding my vehicle.
The very first suggestion when you type "gr86 engine" in japanese is "gr86 engine blow". We're all suffering the same issues. The only difference is that we have a focus on low-cost street solutions in the english speaking community while at least one japanese racing team focused on an internal sump mod which would is useless to the average owner and a poor solution to even most enthusiasts.
Thank you for your continued research on this platform. From what I am seeing, the best protection option for us FA24 track day enthusiasts is a 1L engine overfill. For cars that are dual duty - track and street, what are the implications of driving an overfilled car on street?
The concern would be you’d likely be dipping the crankshaft in the oil in the sump. We’re going to try to take more precise measurements when my engine is out. That can cause power loss and oil aeration. I would not recommend that significant of an overfill on the street.
@@900BRZi dont remember, but do you have a oil catch can? You can measure how much oil per hour you accumulate in there with and without overfill. That would be a good indication, if you have serious windage issues you will probably be able to measure it in the blow by gases.
Very good work man, I really appreciate this kind of genuine meticulous investigation! Do you think that using a different oil pickup location would work better for the Acusump? Like a sandwich plate or something? Having that solenoid with a one way valve would be really nice.
Yeah that’s worth thinking through. I think some people have a separate inlet for the accusump on the exit of the oil cooler and then only inject into the block port, instead of injection and recharging from there.
Thinking about the oil pressure drop: it seems like the asymmetrical position of the pick up is why we (2012 BRZ owner here) are only seeing big drops on *right* hand corners. To me this suggests modifications to this element rather than baffles. I've got 2 suggestions 1/ Symmetrically located pick up with a wider spoon (not sure if that is the correct term) so it can still find oil even under high lateral forces 2/ Swing mount/jointed arm pickup that can move with lateral forces and always find oil. Thoughts?
Replacing the pickup requires removing the timing cover, so you have to pull the whole engine out and tear down most of the accessories. It’s a big job, so we’ve been focusing on solutions that allow keeping the stock pickup.
sorry to hear about this whole debacle this was probably the absolute worst case scenario. big ups to verus for stepping up to cover your engine replacement that is seriously awesome of them that certainly softens the blow a little bit. quick question for my own verification about the graph at 8:30 , is the green line in the bottom portion of the graph the oil pressure with the 1 quart overfill? i assume that is also the same line as in the graph around 8:20 just overlaid with the red line of baseline pressure testing? if I'm reading that right it seems like an overfill (at least mostly) solved the issue at least for slower (no offense) drivers right? sorry if my questions don't exactly make sense but I'm mostly just trying to understand those graphs outlining the 1 quart overfill. thanks for all you've done for this platform so far, I cant wait to see what you have next
Yeah, you’re reading the telemetry correctly. And no offense taken-the facts don’t lie haha. Definitely lots of respect to Verus for covering the replacement!
It would have been a little easier to read if I kept the colors consistent between the single-lap views and the comparison view. Will try to do that next time.
Verus is a good company for sure and puts effort in to engineering, that's why I didn't worry when I paid $80 for small plastic part, it's engineering what I paid for. 0w40 is definitely way to go, since you are starting from scratch I think a baseline without oil cooler and with overfill would be good to have as well with 0W40 oil, if you could. I assume you are going with Mobil1 FS?
It is hard ot tell in the edited video but I think left a VERY important question unanswered, that will shed the light at what we can expect from stock cars. How long did the engine last under load with 0psi? Yes, it is all subjective but what you have on your hands is not a catastrophic failure after light application. I noticed at least 2 minutes of high throttle application with no oil pressure and you still managed to bring it in with what sounded like a mild to miderate knock. This is not unimpressive and a testiment ot how good modern engine oils are. There is a good chance that had you restarted your engine (to release the sucked up part), you could avoid replacement alltogether. Yes, it is a could've/would've type situation but I think there's a lesson in there.
Yeah good point. I ended up doing some jump cuts in editing to not slow down the pace of the video too much. Here’s some more info: - At 27s into the lap, pressure drop event occurs - 1m28s last time above 6000 RPM (this the point where I understand there’s been at least a sensor failure and start to drive differently) - 1m50s last application of throttle position over 55% - 2m07s in pit entry Definitely impressive for it not to throw a rod in those conditions. Other friends with failures did throw a rod. I’d like to bring back the oil pressure warning switch, which was removed in place of the oil pressure sensor, or to otherwise build a warning system. Had I shut of the engine right away, I agree we potentially could have avoided the bearing damage.
Wouldn't cold start wear increase compared to 0w-20 if I use 0w-40 engine oil to start cold? I'm worried. I would appreciate it if you could check this part as well during the next experiment. I got your back!!!👍
It’s hard to say what wear would be specifically, but you can look at the two specified kinematic viscosity values oil manufacturers provide to get a sense of what the difference is. Idemitsu 0W-20 (either OEM or very similar to OEM) is 44 cSt at 40 deg C. Motul 8100 EFE 5W30 is 70 and Mobil 1 FS 0W40 is 77. At 100 deg C the KV is much closer at 8.3, 12.1, and 13.8. We routinely see higher temperatures than 100 C so we are worried about 0W-20 thinning out too much on track.
Good vid and sorry about your motor. This entire year I’ve been running a moroso baffle, 1 quart overfill, 2qt accusump w/manual valve and had zero pressure related issues(fa20). I open it up on pit out, and close it at pit in. I’m also on aero and Hoosiers. I can certainly vouch for accumulators.
That’s great to hear. We’re considering the Moroso because it has a higher operating pressure and no pressure relief valve. Do you use a cable operated valve? How do you route the cable and how long is it?
@@900BRZ wish I could post a pic, but no I actually have my AS mounted laterally in the passenger footwell. The valve is closest to me so I can still reach it with the belts loose. I mounted a camera to monitor the AS gauge, but haven’t overlayed it with track data yet.
I do have an unopened remote valve for sale if you need one 😂 I also teed the AS into my oil cooler. I didn’t like the super high cold pressures I was getting from the top front galley.
@politicallyerect6086 Oh cool, I see. You can message me at @900brz on instagram if you wanna share photos. We have been thinking about adding a pressure sensor to the air side of the accumulator so we can add that to our data logging as well.
I'm guessing that spot welds failed on the prototype. I'd like to see this baffle with door pursued more than the Accusump (even though I ran one on my STI for years). I overfill my BRZ and depending on the paddock grade I may smoke a bit when the engine first runs. I don't have an A/OS. I do have an oil cooler and a vented hood. I have about twenty track hours on it this year alone. Making 228 WHP, revving to 7,500 RPM's at times, and pushing it very hard, I'm very happy with the engine and it still has not missed a beat! Oil pressures have stayed consistent.
I’m hoping to potentially get my hands on a TRD baffle as well, but at this point we’re thinking (based on the success of the overfill test) that the main problem is slow return to the oil pan and that we need to make more oil available either through an overfill, high capacity pan, accusump or some combination. Agree that it would be nice to have viable mitigations without everyone needing an accumulator.
We are a minority market but if anyone in Subaru HQ is paying close attention (which they should), giving you access to 3-4 FA24 crates plus stipend for all your labor/research would be the minimum instead of our community footing the bill… In any case big thank you for pushing through and sorry for what happened on track.
Any plans to get some data for Un-Baffled Overfilled passes? I'd like to know if the overfilling is going to be our band-aid here in the interim or maybe even just the answer moving forward?
We’re thinking an accumulator can give us similar benefit without as much concern for the crankshaft aerating the oil. But it would be interesting to try significant overfills by themselves. Might as well do that testing too.
Like he mentioned in the video, other folks have tested overfill with positive results...BTRJustin as well as myself have covered this in the forums. Its not a cure, but helps reduce the severity of the drops. This is similar to the effect of heavier weight oils.
Is it possible to do an accumulator with a manual and a solenoid? As in have it manually closed for everyday driving to prevent overpressure and where the solenoid would prevent overfill at the track when driving slowly ie cool down or pit lane. Accumulator to solenoid to manual is what I'm imagining, from the outside looking in it sounds like the best of both worlds.
Thank you so much for the donation. Yeah I think that would be possible, but we might also be able to find an electronic solenoid value that doesn’t allow flow from the engine to the accumulator when unpowered. Lots of ways to go from here actually and more minds working on this problem is definitely accelerating progress.
I just remember the distrust you have with pure electronic solenoids given their failure rates. When you find one an additional manual valve might be peace of mind for daily driving.
@@janjotat Yeah that’s true. I’m feeling a little more emboldened by Ansix using the manual valve and just accepting the overfill will be there on idle. As long as we can see pressures and ensure that we’re not creating dips with aeration, we should be able to be reasonably confident with just a manual valve. If Verus or another company is able to develop a high capacity sump, that would be interesting too, as we could get the benefits of higher capacity without the drawbacks of crankshaft aeration.
Honestly, a pan with kickouts and trap doors should've been the plan from the start considering how shallow the sump is. There isn't a lot of reserve capacity either.
Check out the BTR video in the description. The Kazama baffle didn’t actually work. We think the solution is more oil or an accusump to overcome slow return.
Before watching this last episode, I was very skeptical whether the oiling issues could even be solved with a baffle or anything regarding the sump. Much of the issues with the fa20 haven't really been solved and have pointed more towards oil galley issues feeding rods 2 & 3. FA20 drivers tried larger oil pumps, optimized pick up tubes, machining the timing cover, shimming bypass valve etc... none of it seemed to work other than the bandaid of adding an accusump and dealing with it's shortcomings or dumping 5k+ into a dry sump. I am honestly suprised overfilling with the baffle in place made such a large difference. I would love to see more data on this. If the data is repeatable I think it would be worth trying a larger oil pan.
Yeah, we definitely need to do more overfill testing with faster drivers. There were a handful of people who were skeptical about baffles from the start, so I kinda have to just tip my hat to them. We have seen moderate improvements with the SYMS baffle, so right now it still feels like better than nothing if there was no warranty to worry about. I’m not sure it justifies removing the pan and risking warranty coverage though.
It's sad for the engine... On the other hand, it's true that sh☆t can happen during R&D. Thanks to Verus to help you out. We will wait to see the 1L overfill Thanks 🤝
Sorry about the engine, but you certainly got good results in the failure states of the Verus baffle which can be used to further improvements. Hell yea CM Autohaus is the best.
Same. I need to do some more research there. Seems like it’s possible to get approval through CARB: ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/california-racing-vehicles-aftermarket-parts-executive-orders
Yeah that seems like it would be possible but maybe a headache. Personally, if it works and can be sold legally in CA, I think there would be a market for it even if you had to pay the cost of 1 cat
