KYUSHA DREAMS: ROCKY AUTO’S CARBON HAKOSUKA

copy from http://www.speedhunters.com/2013/08/kyusha-dreams-rocky-autos-carbon-hakosuka/

 

Purists, look away. I’m pretty sure that by now you should all know what the name Rocky Auto is synonymous with. This is one place that isn’t afraid to fettle with authenticity, taking a modern approach to the sort of Japanese vintage rides we all know and respect. Watanabe’s latest project couldn’t possibly be a better ambassador for this way of thought and it’s one we got a little glimpse of back in February at the Nostalgic 2 Days. Back then the car wasn’t even fitted with an engine yet, but it didn’t take much imagination to figure out that with a carbon fiber body…

… it would be running something pretty special for propulsion. The car isn’t actually completed yet, but Watanabe-san was kind enough to quickly fit the wheels and a bunch of other interior parts the night before my visit and get it down from the lift so that I could feature it. And I’m glad he did because this is one car I’ve really been looking forward to admiring in all its glory. It follows much the same recipe as the RB30-powered carbon S30 Rocky Auto built back in 2009, except what makes it very special is that you just don’t see these wild sort of conversions done to Hakosukas. Seeing that the car was only ever sold in Japan, it tends to be a more revered Nissan classic – one that people haven’t dared to meddle with too much. Most are usually more than content with going for a 2000 GT-R look and modding the L-series motor that usually powers them, except of course Watanabe had different ideas.

The exterior itself is mostly wrapped in carbon-look vinyl but countless bits and pieces have been custom made out of carbon fiber. So the whole bumper-less front fascia is carbon, as are the headlight covers, the hood and the fender flares. It all combines to give the car a sort of Works look but with the obvious modern feel carbon fiber introduces to the equation.

There are a lot of cool details that further spice up the looks like these prohibitively expensive dry-carbon fender mirrors from 09 Racing…

… or the C-pillar air outlets, again made in carbon.

Thanks to adjustable Rocky Auto coilovers the car has been significantly lowered onto a set of 15″ Work Meister CR01s, measuring 9.5 inches across at the front. The lack of appropriately sized tires needed to achieve the look that Watanabe wanted, led him to stumble upon a set of old 225/50VR15 Pirelli P7 Cinturato. As you can see from the picture above the aged rubber hasn’t particularly liked the excessive stretching its been subjected to and has begun to split along the rim.

The 11-inch wide rears are fitted with Pirelli P700s…

… in slightly wider 255/50VR15 size. The custom offset of the wheels has been perfectly selected for an optimal fit. The last thing remaining to be done is lower the rear suspension…

… pretty much as far as it will go. With such a unique exterior treatment for a KGC10, it’s hard not to get curious about the car’s driveline…

… which of course hasn’t got a single period correct component in sight. Recall our little tour of Watanabe’s new garage where we came across about seven R32 Autech Versions? Well this is why he has so many – they are donor cars for this rather rare and special version of Nissan’s RB26.

The limited edition Autech R32 was never regarded as quite the special car as other limited edition versions of the Skyline, but the engine that powered it was quite interesting. After grabbing RB26 shortblocks from the Nissan production line Autech would disassemble the engines, and get to work on them. They bored out the blocks to accommodate the 1mm oversized 87mm pistons that increase capacity to 2,627 cc and balanced the crank, con rods and flywheel to guarantee smooth, vibration-free operation all the way to the redline. Furthermore the head was polished for extra flow, helping to extract 220hp.

The engines are easily recognizable thanks the S/S plaque on the intake plenum, playing homage to Shinchiro Sakurai, Prince’s engineer responsible for developing the very first Skyline and later the Prince R380 race car.

To liberate a few more horsepower, Rocky Auto added Tomei Powered camshafts with slightly more aggressive duration and lift, and fine-tuned the overlap thanks to HKS adjustable cam gears. A full stainless steel exhaust system, including the six-into-one headers, helps give the RB26 a more vintage raspy tone and slightly increases throttle response. The engine is fitted with a lightweight Toda Racing flywheel and sends drive to a Nissan five-speed transmission.

Watanabe is still tuning the suspension and will probably end up running slightly more negative camber than what the top mounts of the coilovers allow.

To pay homage to the successful 2000 GT-R race cars that dominated endurance races in Fuji Speedway in the early to mid seventies, an external front-mounted oil cooler was fitted – quite a contrasting addition against all the black shiny carbon fiber.

An aluminum Flex radiator of generous dimensions makes sure the RB26DE never runs into issues even if its future owner decides to run the car hard on track.

It might be a sore sight to digest for those that appreciate only period-correct alterations, but it’s not like Watanabe cares. While he would never dream of messing around with a real S20-powered GT-R, these relatively affordable base model Skylines offer a fun platform upon which to go wild on and often create rather fast and exciting cars to drive.

Just like at the front, the rear end is pretty wild, with carbon fiber replacing the whole section, topped off with a carbon trunk and spoiler.

The interior is the final area of the car that needs to be finished off and the day before my visit they had to interrupt fitting the A/C system to get the car ready for the shoot, which is why there are a bunch of wires and looms hanging down under the dashboard.

And talking of the dashboard you may have noticed that it’s a one off piece, made out of aluminum…

… and wrapped in carbon-look vinyl to match the theme of the car. The Carbon-look AutoMeter tachometer and speedometer…

… join the four centrally mounted auxiliary gauges, all neatly positioned for clear consultation.

There’s no hiding the fact that this car will raise a lot of questions to different enthusiasts, but it’s hard not to commend the innovative way of thinking in which Rocky Auto always approaches vintage Japanese rides. If the end result is to extract more fun and enjoyment out of a car that was previously somewhat slow and uninspiring to drive, surely there’s nothing wrong with that?

Dino Dalle Carbonare
Instagram: speedhunters_dino


Rocky Auto Carbon KGC10 Skyline
Numbers
Max power – 220hp, max torque – 245Nm
Engine
Autech S/S Plasma-RB26DE engine swap, Autech forged 87 mm pistons (2,627 cc), 11.5:1 compression ratio, Autech balanced connecting rods and crank, Tomei Powered 260-degree camshafts (IN & EX), HKS cam pulleys, Autech ported head, Trust air filter, Rocky Auto exhaust manifold, Rocky Auto exhaust system, externally mounted oil cooler
Driveline
Toda Racing lightweight flywheel, R32 five-speed transmission
Suspension
Rocky Auto height-adjustable coilovers
Wheels/Tires
Work Meister CR01, 9.5Jx15 (front), 11Jx18″ (rear), Pirelli P7 Cinturato 225/50VR15 (front), Pirelli P7000 255/45VR15 (rear)
Exterior
Rocky Auto carbon front bumper/structure, Rocky Auto carbon bucktooth lip spoiler, Rocky Auto carbon headlight covers, Rocky Auto carbon hood, 09 Racing dry carbon fender mirrors, Rocky Auto front and rear carbon fender flares, Rocky Auto carbon rear bumper/structure, Rocky Auto carbon trunk lid, Rocky Auto carbon rear spoiler, carbon vinyl wrap
Interior
Spot welded and reinforced chassis, Recaro seats, custom dashboard, AutoMeter gauges, Datsun Z steering wheel, automatic A/C

Other Rocky Auto features on Speedhunters
Other Hakosuka stories on Speedhunters

Rocky Auto

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

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Photo By Dino Dalle Carbonare

 

Nerd’s Eye View: Mike Ryan’s Banks Super-Turbo Powered Pikes Peak Freightliner

from

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/3162/Nerds-Eye-View-Mike-Ryans-Banks-Super-Turbo-Powered-Pikes-Peak-Freightliner.aspx

Nerd’s Eye View: Mike Ryan’s Banks Super-Turbo Powered Pikes Peak Freightliner

By Khiem Dinh

Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing.  All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.
A 2008 Freightliner Cascadia is usually not the first choice when deciding to build a Pikes Peak Hillclimb vehicle. Mike Ryan is not your ordinary racer though and he likes his big trucks. This truck is unlike any other truck in the world, not even like those racing trucks out of Europe. Your basic semi-truck uses a turbo that most time attack cars would laugh at for being comically small. Not this truck, no siree Bob! To make this truck exceptionally special, Mike Ryan enlisted the help of Gale Banks to boost the power to hill moving levels. It’s not easy making around 2400hp and 4000+ lb-ft of torque, but we’re going to show you how it was done along with the tricks and components required to make a 5-ton semi-truck turn and stop.

Your basic Detroit Diesel Series 60, 6-cylinder, 14L engine starts off life at around 575hp and 1850 lb-ft of torque. Banks Power went in and designed a custom compound setup using an 8.3L Whipple supercharger and a Borg Warner S510 turbocharger. Making the engine run with the new forced induction setup is a custom calibrated Detroit Diesel ECU. To maximize air density and intercooling efficiency, a lot of water and methanol injection are used. A suite of Banks advanced injection systems are used as well. The Banks injection systems consist of a Straight-Shot, Double-Shot, and Triple-Shot. In this picture, you can see the solenoids of a Banks Double-Shot system injecting a water/meth mixture into the inlet of the supercharger. To maximize compressor efficiency, you want to perform your ‘intercooling’ DURING compression. So as the air is compressed, heat is being extracted simultaneously. Spraying the water/meth pre-supercharger achieves this by having the liquid evaporate during the compression of the air. The phase change from liquid to gas absorbs a tremendous amount of heat acting to intercool the air during compression in the blower. My 10^th grade Chemistry teacher would be proud that I learned something applied in the real world.

The air is fed to the blower through this intake featuring three air filters! With as much air as the engine is sucking in, maximum filtration area is required to minimize pressure drop. As the stickers show, when the engine is at full-tilt, it can do some serious suckage.

The compressed air leaves the blower and enters the turbocharger to be squeezed even further. How does this relatively small turbo push enough airflow to generate 2400hp? Remember our Turbo Tech lesson on generating compressor maps? The maps show a corrected mass flow value with the inlet condition corrected to atmospheric pressure. But what if you increase the pressure at the compressor inlet of the turbocharger as is the case with this compound setup? The compressor wheel can then flow much greater mass flow. In this case, the supercharger compresses the air enough for the turbocharger to push 2400hp worth of mass flow.

Feeding exhaust gas to the turbocharger is this super-sexy manifold fabricated from Burns Stainless components. You’re not going to find any better merge collectors than the ones Burns Stainless make. Dual Tial wastegates are employed to control turbocharger speed. Take note of the compressor outlet pipe being wrapped in insulation as it snakes its way past the exhaust manifold. While the compressed air is hot, it’s not nearly as hot as the heat coming off the exhaust manifold. Lastly, big turbos are heavy. The team wisely designed some supports to take the weight off the exhaust manifold.

The upper and lower ports on the Tial wastegates are utilized to maximize boost control. Hard lines are used to maximize durability. Also note the extra few bends in the hard lines to help prevent failure from vibrations. I learned this trick from my days of fabricating HVAC systems.

The wastegate signal is controlled with this MAC solenoid.

The turbo and wastegate exhaust flows exit through this triple-shooter of an exhaust.

Back on the compressed air side, two Tial BOVs are used. 2400hp worth of air mass flow is a lot! As the engine is pushing somewhere around 60psi of boost, all of the intercooler tubing joints are fortified with these bars to ensure a pipe never blows off. Two hose clamps on each side are also in place to help prevent leaks.

 

The IC piping snakes its way from the engine’s mid-engine placement to the front of the truck where a fairly large IC is mounted. Take note again of the bars used to prevent the IC pipes from blowing off. Wait, maybe the IC looks kinda small for 2400hp you say?

A Banks Double-Shot Auto-Chiller system is used here. It’s a two-stage system with the flow being tied to the intercooler outlet temperature. The first three nozzles spray a mist onto the intercooler when the intercooler outlet temperature reaches 100F. The second set of two, making for a total of five nozzles, come into play when the temperature exceeds 150F. Again, evaporative cooling is the basic operating principle in play and used to externally cool the charge air flow. For anyone living in dry and hot climates, this is basically a swamp cooler for the intercooler.

The intercooler and radiator are stacked vertically side-by-side. Proper shrouding was used to force as much air through these heat exchangers as possible.

The front-end opening is massive.

The fully-pressurized air finally makes its way to the polished intake manifold. Here, a Banks Triple-Shot system using six 5 GPH injectors sprays water/meth into each individual intake runner of the manifold. The flow is provided by a staged two-pump system which is computer controlled for optimum delivery. Above the intake manifold are the custom fabricated brackets for the blower setup.

The supercharger requires a lot of power, so a really strong belt is used. There are a lot of teeth on that wheel working hard to help prevent belt slippage.

Here is another look at all the CNC’d goodness required to mount the supercharger.

Mounted low in the rear flanks of the truck are the fluid reservoirs for the water/meth and pure water. They are labeled and color-coded to ensure that the proper liquids are filled for each.

A Fuel Safe fuel cell contains the diesel liquid. The fuel cell is also labeled to prevent putting in the wrong fluids because who knows, someone might try to fill it with oil or something.

Transferring all that torque and power from the engine to the massive rear tires is a ZF (it’s a European company, so you have to call it Zed-F) HP 600 5-speed automatic transmission. I wonder if this is the same transmission used for semi-truck racing in Europe…

Holy rear-end Batman! That appears to be a Speedway Engineering rear anti-sway bar sitting atop the frame rails.

The Optima batteries are mounted low and as far rearward as they can be to put some weight over the rear tires. King Shocks provided a custom coil-over setup for the big truck and the remote reservoirs are mounted on the brace going across the rear of the frame rails.

Look at the size of the rear differential! It’s a Meritor RS 17145 unit. Look at the size of that U-joint on the driveshaft! In case you didn’t see what the license plate says in the previous picture, it says, “size matters”. As for the straps, I’m assuming they are used for the same purpose as on off-road racing trucks which is to limit droop travel. Thanks to our super smart readers for teaching me that one.

There is some adjustability designed into the solid rear axle suspension design.

The rear King Shocks damper uses a tender spring setup. 4-piston brakes are used on the rear with 15.1” diameter rotors.

About those rear tires… they are Michelin XDA-HT's in 445/50 R22.5 with a road racing rubber compound. A whole lotta bolts are used to keep the 15”x22.5” Accuride wheels attached to the hubs.

The rear tires leave a substantial footprint on the ground. Because no one really makes racing wings for a Freightliner, a wing from a Stearman bi-plane was repurposed.

The rear wing is a triple-element design to generate downforce as efficiently as possible.

What else is in the rear of the truck? A handful of heat exchangers to keep the various fluids cool are placed in available spaces. I can imagine the transmission fluid getting quite toasty. A Racepak system with a lot of channels is also mounted back there.

Mounted on the other side of the truck under the intake manifold are another pair of heat exchangers.

Right, now back to the front of the truck. The King Shocks front damper also uses a remote reservoir design and Eibach springs. The front Michelin XZU2 is ONLY 305/70R22.5 on a 9.25” wide Accuride wheel.

There is some awesomeness associated with the front suspension. There appears to be a solid -3 degrees of camber, if not more!

The front brakes use Meritor 4-piston calipers clamping 17” rotors. This truck weighs in around 5 tons however, so brake cooling front and rear is achieved using a Banks Straight-Shot system which sprays water into the center of the rotor. Remember those labeled fluid storage containers? I imagine it would be bad juju to spray meth at glowing hot brake rotors.

The steering system is not simple. Quite a few bends are required to transmit the driver's inputs from the steering wheel to the rack.

A Howe Performance rack and pinion steering system is used to turn those massive front tires. This is a good view of how low the engine sits in the chassis to reduce the center of gravity as much as possible. Tucked behind everything somewhere in there is another Speedway Engineering anti-sway bar.

At the opposite end of the steering shaft is where the steering wheel would typically reside. However, it has a quick release on it to allow for easy ingress/egress. A Racepak dash feeds info to the driver.

A few gauges are mounted in the dash to keep tabs on the various Banks fluid injection systems.

Mastercraft 3G seats keep the occupants in place along with DJ Safety seat belts. No one likes fires in their race vehicles, so a DJ Safety fire system was installed just in case.

Foam padding is used all around the cage in the cab to prevent injury. All of the fancy cage, chassis, and frame work were performed by a volunteer force of fabricators and engineers.

On the outside of the cab is this roof scoop. Looking back at the previous picture of the cab interior, it does not appear to feed into the cab. So where does it lead to?

I think the roof scoop channels air to this dump behind the cab. What’s the purpose of it? Maybe it’s to get some more cooling air around the engine and turbocharger. It may also reduce drag by filling the void behind the cabin with some air thereby reducing the size of the wake. It might also improve the effectiveness of the rear wing. The rear edge of the roof on the cab appears to have vortex generators which are also used to reduce drag and possibly improve the effectiveness of the rear wing. You know those vortex generators on the back of the roof of the Evo IX? Yeah, same idea.

This truck has a supercharger. This truck has a turbocharger. It has lots of pumps and spray nozzles. It’s so big and goes so fast, it needs water cooling for the brakes. It’s so big it needed a wing from an airplane. It has ten times the horsepower of my S2000 and about twenty-five times the torque. This truck is so awesome that Optimus Prime keeps a poster of it on his bedroom wall. Chuck Norris doesn’t drive this truck, this truck tells Chuck Norris where to drive. Bruce Wayne wanted the truck to use as the Batmobile, but Mike Ryan said no. Good luck trying to catch this truck.

Banks Super-Turbo Freightliner RACE FOOTAGE 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvs5jYCMSD8