Project - Track Focused Atom 3

[Peter255]

Keep the updates and pictures coming.

Its great to see a few Atoms pushing beyond stock levels to see what is possible!

Looking forward to seeing a video of this on the rollers!

[Garmster]

Very interesting progress, thanks for sharing. Interesting you are going to run a meth kit. Where will you store the tank given there is not much space? Also interested in understanding the rationale of fitting such system to an Atom, could you not get the desired ~360bhp just by regular stage maps, turbo mods etc? This is for my learning purposes.

Great question and gets to the crux of my rationale which could be a load of b0ll0cks and I may have to go over some previous discussions, apologies for the long version. Firstly I could have just left it alone and pottered around with 300BHP but unfortunately I have to tinker. I'm not an expert but then I'm not sure you need to be when you break it down in simple terms. Remember I started with an engine where I fried the pistons, rods and crank so I had to replace/rebuild my engine and have better oil management. I could have gone out and bought a stock K20 and paid 10k for the 350r from Atom or 10k with TDI north on a turbo and achieve 350bhp. However, you've built your house on dodgy foundations. I track my Atom ALL the time so my expectation is that I will be driving through the rev range and every gear. How long would it be before I throw rod or fry a piston, probably not long. And when you have a chat with TDI or Atom, they'll tell you, your engine has to be upto the job for any these big upgrades.

No matter what I do, I had to build a solid foundation if I want more power so I decided to go the full hog. Forged, lightened, billet, strokered, polished and ported, cams, baffled sump, oil cooled, dash upgrades etc etc. Now I have an engine that is good for 800bhp if only we can get more air into the chambers. We will see some increase in power with the 2.2 stroker kit, ported and polished head, cams and lightened billet crank etc but unless we can get more air into the chambers, we can't get more power. It takes two to tango and in this case its air and fuel. The Jackson Racing Supercharger (JRSC) is at its limits and can't drive any more air without driving intake temps up. Trying to drive the charger harder by changing e.g. pulley sizes will increase the intake temps to the point where you'll probably get pre-detonation causing engine damage. In any case you'll be losing horsepower exponentially as the air intake temps get higher. This is why Ariel's 350r upgrade will combine a smaller pulley to drive the charger harder as well as charge cooler to reduce the intake temps amongst many other bits and bobs.

So why the meth kit? Simple. To get more power I could:
- Add a turbo = 10k
- Add 350r kit = 10k
- Add meth kit = 500 squid

Given I've spent so much money on the engine and other bits I need to take step back and pause to take stock of where I am and I just bought another car (arrives tomorrow):

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No doubt I will be installing a turbo at some point but for now I want reliability with a little extra horses. Oil cooled and baffled, now I need to focus on more air. So the meth water kit is a simple way of getting the intake temps down and allow better fuel and dense air combustion. Untuned you could achieve 15 to 30 bhp and tuned you could be looking at 40 - 80 bhp. Maybe I'm being over optimistic but we'll soon see when I take the Atom to be mapped on the 27th of this month. I'll make sure that there are fail safes in place so that if the ECU detects an increase in temps i.e. the meth has stopped working then it will adjust the timing etc accordingly.

There maybe mistakes in my assumptions and I am happy to be corrected. I'm always happy for people's input so please don't shoot me down if you think my rationale is a little skewed.

[Garmster]

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The pics above relate to the Race Technology adapter that will provide my Dash2 with Oil Temps.

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The pic above shows the sensor from Race Technology that will provide my Dash2 with Oil Pressure. No longer will I have to rely on a 1 or 0 which by all accounts is fairly meaningless. I want to see ahead of time and at a granular level what's going on BEFORE my engine goes bang.

[Garmster]

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Race Technology Oil Pressure sensor from a different view point.

[Garmster]

It's time to install the Water Meth kit. I went with the simple AEM v2.1 Meth Kit.

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We had to make a inlet for the meth injector as we can only put it in the rubber hose before the throttle body and after the mass air flow sensor. This only leaves us with the rubber hose in between them. I could have inserted the nozzle directly into the rubber pipe but it probably would have failed at some point. So we cut the pipe and inserted metal tubing between the cut sections to insert the injector nozzle. See below:

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Housed the Water Meth tank behind the Atom Seat bulkhead, fits nicely and will be easily accessible. Used some bolts to tilt / space it away from the engine firewall so that its a better angle to access and poor in the water meth fluid.

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Ps: ignore the pic of the pump, although very neat, it has to sit below the tank as gravity feeds fluid to the pump. It will now be located under the passenger's seat out of sight and will sit slightly off the ground. It is waterproof so should be fine but will take care when washing the Atom.

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As you can see, the Meth controller will sit nicely alongside my auto blipper and data logger

[tuscanracer]

I’m going to be racing the car you pictured earlier in the thread this year, which will also be running an MMR engine and Meth injection. The tank is mounted in the side pods although this has meant Ariel getting creative with the catch tank! Maybe see you on track testing

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[Garmster]

I’m going to be racing the car you pictured earlier in the thread this year, which will also be running an MMR engine and Meth injection. The tank is mounted in the side pods although this has meant Ariel getting creative with the catch tank! Maybe see you on track testing
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Aah so you're the lucky one who bought Stuarts Atom, awesome bit of kit. Go race and win loads .

Can I nick your aero please?

[thomas_fr]

Be careful, the controller is not waterproof. Install it in a waterproof box near the pump.
Also, installing it on the dashboard means you need a vacuum/boost line of nearly 2-3 meters. Not a good idea.

[Garmster]

Be careful, the controller is not waterproof. Install it in a waterproof box near the pump.
Also, installing it on the dashboard means you need a vacuum/boost line of nearly 2-3 meters. Not a good idea.

Thanks Thomas, I forgot about this. You did mention previously. Passed your concerns onto my trusted mechanic Evan, let's see what he says. Ps: I don't go out on track when its raining

[Garmster]

Be careful, the controller is not waterproof. Install it in a waterproof box near the pump.
Also, installing it on the dashboard means you need a vacuum/boost line of nearly 2-3 meters. Not a good idea.

Thanks Thomas, I forgot about this. You did mention previously. Passed your concerns onto my trusted mechanic Evan, let's see what he says. Ps: I don't go out on track when its raining

Decided to put the controller behind the seats as settings won't change so don't need it in my face.

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[thomas_fr]

I installed mine there.

wire the status LED (or better, the failsafe monitor) to the dashboard and you'll be fine

[Toilet Duck]

It's time to install the Water Meth kit. I went with the simple AEM v2.1 Meth Kit.
image.png

We had to make a inlet for the meth injector as we can only put it in the rubber hose before the throttle body and after the mass air flow sensor.

Ideally you should ditch the MAF sensor and go with a dedicated IAT (intake air temp) sensor AFTER the supercharger (this is what I did). If you run the standard MAF sensor (as per how the car left ariel), the ECU uses this to measure the temp of the air and adjust fuelling etc accordingly. However, the temp of the air at this point is pretty much meaningless, you want to know the temp of the air AFTER the supercharger once its been compressed and heated up.

Also, and I don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but the Hondata ECU on an atom 3 (if that's what you have) does not have the capability to have "specific" dedicated meth injection inputs/settings. I believe that earlier Hondata Ecu's (maybe those using kpro rather than flashpro) DO have dedicated meth settings.

[thomas_fr]

It's time to install the Water Meth kit. I went with the simple AEM v2.1 Meth Kit.
image.png

We had to make a inlet for the meth injector as we can only put it in the rubber hose before the throttle body and after the mass air flow sensor.

Ideally you should ditch the MAF sensor and go with a dedicated IAT (intake air temp) sensor AFTER the supercharger (this is what I did). If you run the standard MAF sensor (as per how the car left ariel), the ECU uses this to measure the temp of the air and adjust fuelling etc accordingly. However, the temp of the air at this point is pretty much meaningless, you want to know the temp of the air AFTER the supercharger once its been compressed and heated up.

Also, and I don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but the Hondata ECU on an atom 3 (if that's what you have) does not have the capability to have "specific" dedicated meth injection inputs/settings. I believe that earlier Hondata Ecu's (maybe those using kpro rather than flashpro) DO have dedicated meth settings.

Even with a Kpro on a PRA/PRB/PRC ecu, watermeth settings are not that easy to setup in a kpro, you better have to consider the injection is always enabled and adapt your fuel tables / ignition tables with meth enabled.
And use a failsafe monitor, with the safe mode output wired to the kpro.

You can use nitrous functions for meth injection, but it's not a fuel table / ignition table, it's only "add/remove x% of fuel or add/remove x° of ignition" when meth is on.

[Garmster]

I installed mine there.

wire the status LED (or better, the failsafe monitor) to the dashboard and you'll be fine

As you wish....

[Garmster]

Engine install time lapsed video: