Tracy is dealing with water coolant plumbing problems as we speak.
It is still running hot. I just got off the phone.

He is also disappointed in his cool air duct to the intake system
with several inches of water drop. Also his HP is down compared to his
old engine. Some of that is no doubt related to the pressure drop.
Some pressure drop is due to a long SCAT hose but some is due
to the NACA duct used instead of a ram air scoop. During the Sun 100
race he was reporting 32 inches of Hg in the intake system.
His last engine used the large third gen intake ports while this
engine uses the low power auto TX version of the RX8 engine with
smaller
ports. It is too early to say for sure that this version of the
RX8 engine will generate less HP than a 3rd gen engine but that
is my humble opinion. Note the small size of the intake ports in the
pic below.
Here too is a picture of the high power RX8 intake ports for
comparison.

Every time you make what appears to be a simple change new problems
occur.

His new intake system looks like this currently.
The plywood box will be replaced by a metal box eventually.

One thing about Tracy. He enjoys going against and ignoring
conventional wisdom :)
It will be interesting to see what he eventually winds up with :)

Paul Lamar

-Jerry Hey wrote:

I think the air box on the hot side has potential especially for those
looking for shorter p port runners.  The box should be pressurized with
ram air and an air filter. It could be (and may already be) insulated
and sealed with an overflow drain away from the exhaust. If the rad
were not in the way, the box could be fed from the front of the cowl.
Easy for me to make comments now.  The idea  is thought provoking.   If
we could safely  put the intake on the hot side,  the space problem on
top of the engines would be history.    Jerry

Just about every V engine car in the world uses a wrapped up intake manifold.
Here is one of my early concepts.

Paul Lamar
 
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