Heat Management, Part 6

A friend removed his thermostat. That popped a question in my head. For those of you who's asking what a thermostat is;

A thermostat is like a valve that opens when it reaches it's desired temperature. It is located in the cooling system line of most cars in the market. When it is closed, it allows little(close to no) water to pass through along it's cooling line.

Okay, thermostats have certain "degrees" or opening temperature. For example,

OEM : 82degrees Celsius, perhaps 75 for some.
Sard for Toyota 4e : 68deg C
TRD for Toyota 4e : 71deg C


Okay, most importantly, WHY is the thermostat there?

 Here's my answer: your thermostat is there for a reason. Sure, you can remove it and assume that there will be no harm to your car. It may be half true. Cold start takes a longer time, takes forever to heat up since water is always passing through the radiator. The affect in this situation is minimal as the car is not moving yet, and taking into consideration that your air cond fan is not running, aka aircond off. No natural airflow going through the radiator yet. The car will take forever to heat up to operating temperature though if you start moving immediately.

Secondly, I was once young and stupid. My charade used to be a 1.0 3cylinder carb engine. I was on the way down from Genting and took the Karak Highway back to KL. No thermostat. The engine temperature dropped to below the bottom dot of C on my temp meter. Idling was 1.5k as the car was recognised as cold start. With a thermostat, temperature would've been regulated. This is also noticeable on EFI cars.

Thirdly, piston ring clearance and engine oil. When the car is THAT cold, ring clearance gap increases as the rings have not yet expand. Engine oil temperature may still be cold and unable to lubricate or protect the engine fully, this is debatable though. We once race a race porsche that was smoking like a pot on cold start. Once it's achieved 80deg Cel, compression was perfect and the car was no longer churning blue smoke. I repeat, blue smoke, not white. This theory is supported by a situation of when you are bulding an engine; you have ring end gaps for expansion allowance. Crucial, very crucial especially on forged piston sets where they expand way more than OEM pistons.
F1, for example. They pre-boil their engine oil before pouring it into an engine before race.


Fourth, some engine magements especially standalones are so tunable that we can  tune maps according to IAT, engine temperature, oil temperature, coolant temperature. I need not elaborate on this.

Fifth, for rally or race cars that run without thermostat, this is understandable though. They take extra precautious steps in ensuring engine protection. This shouldnt matter to them as they will rely heavily on engine cooling. My highest respect goes to these guys for taking things a step higher. If I'm not mistaken, Lotus cars by Aleyzo even run without radiator fans in Dubai and achieved 4deg Cel cooler in terms of operating temperature compared to when they have fans. The had proper ductings though. They'd have one guy holding a blower towards the radiator when the car is in the pits.



Sixth... back to RACE THERMOSTATS, they open and close at a lower temperature. If you have a heavily modified engine that heats up so fast, an oem thermostat may just be the culprit of your car not being able to cool down itself in time, hence, an aftermarket thermostat. They open earlier, allow a fair amount of time for the coolant to start passing through to cool down just before it heats up dangerously.


Sard Thermostat
-This is available in two models if I am not mistaken, 68 and 71deg. One of them has a hole on top, jiggle valve removed.






 TRD Thermostat
This is a TRD Thermostat. Opens at 71deg Cel. Closes anything below that

Opening time is normlly written on the thermostat itself







 Seventh, you will notice a jiggle valve. Most mechanics do not care on the position of this during thermostat installation. Please note that the valve is to be located on top, nowhere else. The jiggle valve allows little water to pass through. Fact is that perhaps less stress on the waterpump, like a bypass valve. Air or air bubbles is also allowed to pass through if the valve is positioned on top. Less chances of airlock and hotspots. I am unable to verify this though.




Eighth, oh my... my brain cells are fying. I have a couple more reasons and facts but my brain just stopped working, sorry :).


Conclusion :
Thermostat has its function. But not as important as the reason it is there.

Heat Management, Part 5.1

This post, was written back in one of my previous blogs, November 6th, 2007. Back in the days where I was still a student, an apprentice, learning. Still stupid, from the below pictures.






Life's back to normal by goin to college :).
As usual, college sucked, but friends there rocks. Here's what we did :





We had to boil a car thermostat in water. At the same time, I bought two eggs and put inside to be boiled, to be give to the lecturer lol. Its a fun way of learning. At last, we kena kantoi... kena screwed by lecturer :p.


Business for side income has been good yesterday, sold quite a number of stuff lol. At least got extra money to eat this month :).

Well, dont wanna write much, gotta go to bed, re-align and re-adjust my sleeping time. Goodnight, world.

Tranny swapped, car colllected, driven.

 

The Perdana was collected on the same day I wrote my previous post.



             "The Perdana is ready, he said.
                             It will be fun, they said."



I got into the car and went for a test drive. Indeed the ratios were long and the car had enough torque to pull it thorugh! To my surprise the wheel was easy to spin, even in mid-gear on first. Gun the throttle down and you start spinning. The ratios are long but not too far apart from gear to gear.

The gear lever was positioned in a rather satisfying position, not needing me to stretch my hand far out to reach it. YES, I am short.

However, I was told by Sara that I had to find my own "Pagoda" or gear lever cover. I will get down to that later. An uberly ugly gearknob was also provided.

During the drive, I noticed that the engine was rocking a little only to find out that the torque killed the front mounting and halfcut tranny mount. The front mounting was replaced the very next day. The throw from gear to gear was rather long, embedding the idea of either making or looking for a short shifter deep in my mind. One of the bushes for the gear lever cable was also not present, therefore causing a slight left-right freeplay when in gear.

 
The next day, I shot down to EA Autoworks @ Bukit Jalil after speaking to Drex over the phone. He was unable to confirm if any of his shifters would fit the car.


Test Fit 
Picture on the left shows Zack working on the car, dismantling the current gear lever to see if it would match one in EA.

  Apparently a Wira one fitted perfectly after some measurements were taken.

Drex also went through the trouble to fabricate a bush for the gear lever cable end. Many thanks to these two who did OT to finish up the car as I went there slightly late.

Results, 1
A chromed finish spanking brand new short shifter. Position was slightly lower. Shift was crispier and way, way way way way way shorter. Note the ugly gearknob lol. The bush was already fitted along the process of getting the lever swapped.
 I also took one of their aftermarket gear knob. Well... white, because it was the only one available and I desperately needed one. The old one comes off during shifting.







I drove around for a day without the gear lever cover and decided... instead of spending 200bucks on a so-called ugly looking pagoda that looks like an 8V Saga gear lever cover, I opted for one to be fabricated. Paid a visit to Finaldeco located in USJ1 to see what are the options available.

 Got there about 10.45am this morning. We discussed on choices and available color and types of "skins" that could be used.
-PVC @ RM70
-Cow Skin aka Leather @ RM170

I asked them if they have the same leather color as my center console, grey. They told me that that particular color of theirs dried up and recommended black. I told them I wanted the stitches to be the same color as the seats. He said it can be done.
 
 Thought that I'd have to give them the measurements for one to be fabricated and wanted to collect it on Monday morning on my off day. To my surprise he said he only needed and hour and dropped me off at a nearby food court for brunch before getting down to work. He took slightly less than hour to produce THIS :

Results, 2
Nice Nappa leather with stitch of the same color as the seats. The bottom of the leather was glued to the base.

 And this is how it looks like after fitting. I guess, the gearknob in white doesn't look too bad. It sort of highlights with major contrast that the car is a MANUAL. Most Perdanas are auto. Sleek simple looking design.


















Keeping the knob clean is gonna be a challenge though -.-!

Blown Transmission

FUCK! Blew my Perdana's auto tranny last Monday. This calls for a write-up on choices and opinions from professionals and experienced mechanic :


Auto Transmission Rebuilding
I know a couple of transmission reconditioning and rebuilding specialist around the Klang Valley that has years and years of experience. They told me the usual "Perdana ah? Normal laaaa gearbox kong".
Well, the last time I drove a 300whp MAzda 6, it was running on a 5-speed auto gearbox that was imported from US, built by Level10, meant to take up to 500hp.

That didn't last long. The transmission was removed and sent to Sun Eng Hup in Segambut to be rebuilt, all beefed up and more layers of clutch discs added into the transmission for better friction threshold. What I am trying to say is that our local tranny builders are capable of doing things the right way; knowing what needs to be upgraded for improved reliability and durability.

After some discussion with them, they told me that there wasn't any particular way to beef up the stock auto transmission for the Perdana and told me that it wouldn't last long with MY way of driving. I was advised to swap it to a manual.






Manual Conversion
This was my only choice. I needed reliability and wanted to reduce downtime of the car. I called a few known mechanics who were familiar with the Perdana, or Proton cars in particular for opinions, quotations and suggestions. Lastly, I went to Sara, someone I used to work with back in my Autochild days about 5 years ago. He opened a new placed called Param Garage down in Jalan Meru Tambahan, Klang specializing in painting, repairs, sandblasting, restoration. A one stop centre. He is also specialized in Mitsu and rotary engines.

He gave me a few options on what kind of transmission(along with their codes, 222, 212, 332, 322 and whatever other numbers which I can't remember) to bolt on. I went for one with a longer ratio as I will be moving to a further area from Subang and will still need to travel to Sungai Besi daily; so, a longer ratio gearbox will be beneficial as I will be able to save a bit of fuel. The price for the conversion was close to 4k inclusive of a manual tranny unit, new clutch plate, used set of gear lever, pedals, clutch pump and flywheel. The price wasn't that heartbreaking, but painful enough to swallow. Thank God that I have enough love for this car to spend this much on it.

Sara messaged me this morning and told me that the car was ready for collection. We shall see how things go when I get the car tonight.