The Jedi racing season has recently started. Because we look after so many engines for the drivers taking part, during the winter we did a lot of development work, mainly looking at cooling systems and the problem of oil starvation around the GSX-R1000 crankshaft.
If we’re honest, the jury’s still out on where we’re at. We know the engines are losing pressure as the oil gets hotter and we’re in the process of prototyping (and then manufacturing) a bigger oil pump and a larger ratio pump drive gear to go with it. The point of the effort is of course to deliver a higher flow rate of oil.
The real problem area is temperature – the oil can’t get above about 90/95° because the pressure just drops. We’ve been able to replicate this on the Dyno with our rig running a ‘refreshed’ engine that was showing low pressure out on track. All the big end tolerances were fine so there was no reason for the drop – it’s just temperature.
So we’re busy re-thinking the whole lubrication strategy for what is a bike engine working extremely hard in a four-wheeled situation… If you’re racing one of these Jedi cars and have any questions give us a call or email – the new pump and gear should be ready to go by the time you’re reading this post.
These things are missiles powered by GSX-R1000 engines – which we know inside and out!
The business end…
