- We're here with Shane T just to have
a chat about the Mazworks S15 drag car
that Shane's been involved with.
Now just recently that car has run as fast
as a 650 at 221 mile an hour.
For a four cylinder SR20 engine,
that makes it number two in the world
for fastest ET.
And with so few runs on the board
since a full rebuild,
it's fair to say that it's still got
a lot of potential to take that record.
So Shane prior to you getting involved
with the car, the car had run
a 670, going from a 670 to a 650,
also it was 207 mile an hour,
to jump to 221.
That's a big difference,
can you start by telling us what changed
in the car to make that difference.
- Well I should start like every other
tuner and say it was all me.
But no the reality of it is that they
wanted me to come in and try
and help them with their existing
hardware that they had in the car.
And I looked at what they had
and I said, I think you'll be better
to just do what I know is already
working in some of the other
projects I'm working on.
So basically this is a four cylinder
version of the six cylinder 2J
stuff that I play around with.
We put an intercooler back on the car,
we put my entire M150 paratrain
management system in the car,
which is the ECU,
the power distribution module,
the dash, all that stuff.
Changed lots of things around with
how the car functions,
clutch wise, and all those,
like everything on the car's
basically different.
We've been doing this for more than a year
trying to get all this stuff lined up.
We took the engine to the dyno
and ran it on the dyno,
we had a great time with it,
made 1800 horsepower.
And so then we were really excited
to put it in the car.
Most, Muhammed Ali,
the owner of the car,
his big concern when he brought
me on board, was man I would
like to have better performance
than we have.
I would like to be consistent.
And man I wanna win.
So now after last weekend we've managed
to accomplish all of those things.
But it's been over a year's worth
of work from all of us
collaborating and working back and forth
and getting things on the car
that we need.
So it looks like it's an immediate success
and it is, it is,
we've been very successful with it quickly
but it's been a lot of behind the scenes
work to get it to that place.
- I think that's probably one aspect that
a lot of the public looking in
don't get to see.
They see a car that goes out after
a fresh build, runs 12 passes,
and gets that close to a world record.
But as you say there's a lot
of behind the scenes work that goes in
and of course there's also the knowledge
of the people involved,
who have already run those sorts
of numbers to know what to put on the car
and make it work.
I just wanna step back a little bit,
you just mentioned that you refitted
an intercooler to the car.
Now it's quite common with methanol
boosted engines to run no intercooler,
so what are your thoughts on that,
where are the pros and cons
of the intercooler versus
no intercooler debate?
- So it comes down to the pressure
ratio that you're trying to run.
Because at some point you're gonna
run the turbo to the end of its limit
and at that point it's really inefficient,
it makes a lot of heat for the amount
of boost pressure that it makes.
And you simply can't get the heat back
out of the air charge with methanol,
without an intercooler on it,
when you run it that hard at the end
of the turbo.
So is this the difference between
the import engines,
obviously you've got very small
displacement so you're running
70, 80, even 100 plus psi,
compared to the pro mod engines
where we don't typically see intercoolers
but their boost pressures are much lower?
- Yeah and if you look at where you are
mass air flow wise on the compressor
map with a small engine,
you're running it way up the left side
of the map right and above the top.
Where the larger pro mod engine
moves enough extra air that it's in
a more efficient spot on the map
and it doesn't take much of a change
in efficiency when you're so horribly
far off the map to begin with.
So from the experience of working on
the cars in Bahrain and all the other
stuff that I work on,
I knew we needed to go to an intercooler.
And we knew we were gonna run it
right out of turbo because
that's the best way.
Small engine, big turbo is always a win.
And yeah I mean it just works.
It's exactly what that 2J is
with a bigger turbo on it,
it's basically two thirds of a 2J.
And it makes two thirds of the horsepower
of a 2J.
- Now when you're running a small
capacity engine like that
with a large turbo and you've already
mentioned you're sort of running
right out to the left hand side
of that compressor map,
if everything's working well,
that's all gonna work out but if the car
goes into tire shake or the driver
has to short shift or something
like that, you can get into porblems
with running past that surge line
on the compressor map.
So is there anything you're doing
to deal with that.
- Yeah of course like so for example
we can't get the boost we want on
the starting line,
if we don't open the intake
wastegate and allow more air
to flow through the turbo
but not through the engine,
'cause we can't stuff it through
the engine, that's why it wants to surge.
So basically what we do is create a leak
that puts the airflow rate more to
the right side of the map,
and that stops the turbo from surging.
So on the starting line,
we have a shaft speed of the turbo
that's enough to say make 35 or 40 pounds.
But the actual inlet manifold pressure's
only 30 because we're bleeding some air
off through that wastegate
to keep it form surging.
And as soon as the clutch comes out,
the gate slams shut,
the boost jumps up,
and the RPM of the turbo just rises
up to the point wherever we want it
as far as how much boost we're gonna run.
- Now that launch control,
just because you've mentioned that,
or that staging strategy,
that's so critical particularly with
a car that runs a slipper or slider
type clutch to get consistent engine
torque at the point that the driver
actually drops the clutch and leaves
the line.
So you've just talked about that wastegate
to bleed off some of that excess air.
What else are you using in that M150
ECU package to actually build
the boost in, how are you controlling
the boost on the start line?
- At the start, so the easiest way
that I've found to make these things
very consistent on the starting line,
number one is the intake gate.
'Cause it's also modulating that gate
right, based on manifold pressure.
So if it goes up and down,
it moves the inlet gate.
The exhaust gate is closed.
And it's standard antilag strategy
with the ignition cut and timing retard,
to give enough energy to the turbine
to get the turbo revved up enough
to make the boost you want.
And then as far as down the racetrack goes
the wastegate on the exhaust side is used
as it typically would be.
But with a little engine,
you're all in pretty quick.
So it's almost how fast can I get it
to make all the way,
everything it can make?
And the turbo on the dyno would make
about 62 pounds of boost.
But it didn't have any head pressure
on the front of it like it has when
it's going 200 miles an hour
at the other end of the racetrack.
- So when you're talking about head
pressure there, you're talking about
essentially a ram effect
into the compressor?
- Yes yeah.
Ram air, when you go 200 miles an hour,
you can pick up about
1.5 pounds of pressure.
And so that extra pressure on the front
of the turbo gets multiplied by
the pressure ratio that turbo's
running at.
In this case we're at an almost 6:1
So 1.5, six, we get about another
nine or 10 pounds more boost.
But only at the other
end of the racetrack.
So it's a matter of chasing the exhaust
pressure as you go down the racetrack
and you're just slowly adding and adding
and adding to hold it at 1:1
all the way down the racetrack it ends
up at 70.
But if you start with that same amount
of pressure on the wastegate,
earlier in the run,
you get the back pressure over the top
of the boost.
So yeah it's just a game
and it's you know with a little engine
you're just picking,
right and that race last weekend
is probably the best I've ever done
at controlling myself
from just wanting to fix everything
all in one run.
Because that usually doesn't work.
You usually spend 10 runs
backing yourself up.
You know so once we kind of ran
the number we ran last week,
it was like, we can win with this.
So now I'm just gonna try to run
the same number every time we go
to the starting line.
And at the end of the weekend
when you lay all the time slips up,
next to each other,
we ran between 650 with a nine,
and 655 with a nine
on five consecutive runs.
- That's pretty impressive consistency.
Now when it comes to actually
making tuning changes to the car
at the track,
and I'm not necessarily talking about
fuel and ignition,
what I'm talking about here
is tuning the car to maximise
the amount of grip available
to the track.
So what are you looking at
and what changes are you making?
- OK so yeah just about anything
that you tune in electronic fuel injection
you're not actually tuning any parts
of the engine on the racetrack,
it's all power management right.
So you're watching the,
particularly the drive shaft speed
or the speed of the car,
the acceleration rate of the car,
and some suspension sensors
to try to understand
what the tyre's doing.
The problem with a slick is,
that it's a spring that you can't control.
So when a drag slick leaves
the starting line it winds up almost
from a side profile like a clock spring
would right and you've gotta hold
that spring wound as tight
as you can get it without over
torquing the tyre and spinning it
against the,
'cause as soon as you do that,
you lose grip and then you're
gonna have tyre shake.
So it's a fine balance but using
the control strategies in the ECU
makes it a lot easier to manage.
I mean effectively it's got closed
loop traction control running it down
the racetrack just like you would do
if you were at Bonneville
or if you were in Standing Mile,
or anywhere else.
So it certainly makes it easier.
And it makes it more predictable.
And it makes it way more fun.
Because really once you've got it
on that traction control curve,
you can add all the horsepower you want
and the ECU will just work harder
to hold it on that curve.
And if you wanna make the car faster
you just move the curve up,
now the car goes faster.
- So when you're talking about
that curve there,
you're not looking at front to rear
wheel speed for slip,
you're looking at driveshaft speed
and profiling that against your
theoretical ideal perfect run?
- You've got two ways to do it.
So obviously with a drag car,
most of them have the front wheel
off the ground so you can't
use traditional front wheel speed
versus rear.
So two ways to do it,
the most common way is use a timer.
That's crap because it's got nothing
to do with the actual position
on the racetrack or the speed of the car,
and it doesn't feed into itself.
So in other words if you put a timer
of driveshaft speed over time,
and you have a graph that's gonna let
the engine rise at a certain rate,
and then you start in water,
it's not going anywhere right?
So the other way to do it is use GPS.
So on the cars in the Middle East,
I have GPS on a few of them,
and we actually still have basically speed
versus rear wheel speed
to do the control like a traditional
traction control would work.
In this case it's just timer drive shaft
over time.
And it tries to control to that rate.
So you still have to make that match
the racetrack.
If you go to a track that's crap or start
in the water box,
that rate's not gonna work anymore.
- You just talked about GPS there.
A lot of the GPS units that we're
conventionally using are only updated
at about 10 hertz or thereabouts
and my own sort of research has shown
that's nowhere near fast enough
for traction control so what are you
actually using?
- So a 10 hertz GPS is plenty fast enough
as long as you are less than one G
of acceleration.
Like at Bonneville where we run about
a half or 6/10ths of a G,
GPS at 10 hertz is no problem.
But absolutely it doesn't work
in a drag race.
Because you outrun the GPS.
But I'm using a 50 hertz GPS.
So that fixes that problem.
- Alright it terms of the actual strategy
once you know that you're into
wheel spin, what are you using
in the ECU, are you using an ignition cut,
retard, all of the above,
boost control?
- Right so the most definitive thing
would be cut.
'Cause you know you're gonna get
what you asked for.
And if you spend the time on the dyno
beforehand to program a timing
retard curve so you know
how much power it's taking away
with a given amount of timing,
and that actually ends up having
to be a three dimensional map.
Because like at peak torque it's
different than it is at either end
of the curve.
So the bottom line is use an ignition
retard mostly.
On a car with a slick,
because you're dealing with that spring,
when you cut a cylinder,
that interruption in the torque
gets an oscillation going to the driveline
and it sometimes makes it wanna shake
the tyre.
- In terms of using the retard on
a turbocharged car though,
there are some downsides with that
as well, you're adding exhaust
gas temperature when you retard
the timing and in turn that actually
adds energy to the turbocharger,
so is controlling all of that a problem?
Do you go around in circles
with that sort of situation?
- So you absolutely go around in circles
if you don't do enough ignition retard.
So at some point you can take
enough efficiency away from the engine
and put it in the turbo that even
if it makes 10 pounds more boost,
it still makes less horsepower
at the crankshaft.
So it's really just a matter of
having it have a huge control range
to be able to make up whatever
it needs to to keep that tyre
doing what it's doing.
Or what you want it to,
let's put it that way.
- Alright look thanks for giving
us some insight into that Shane.
Certainly given that it's such a new
combination with so few runs on the board,
yet so close to that world record
already, coming into winter here
in the United States,
so really look forward to seeing
what that car does next year.
And is it fair to say that world record's
in danger?
- There's no doubt we're going after it.
If you look at the speed that the car runs
versus the ET,
you can see that we're out of balance.
The car's way faster,
which means it makes a lot of horsepower,
but it means I'm not very good
at figuring out how to get that
on the racetrack.
But I'll work on it.
And I just haven't had time
to work on it more than what we did
last week so we will get there.
I'd be shocked if we didn't own
that record by the end of next year.
- We'll look forward to seeing it happen,
thanks Shane.
- Thank you very much, appreciate it.
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