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More Information on the Haltech R35 Engine Failure


I first mentioned this about a week ago. Haltech had supposedly blown up their engine on their R35 GT-R. Here is some more information about the failure.
The Haltech R35 GTR Skyline had a catastrophic blow up on Friday the 24th if October. Our GTR has been running on a new platform of Haltech engine management flawlessly for over 5000km's now.

The car was being track tested at Eastern Creek raceway
(Eastern Creek International Raceway - Australia) when the engine let go. The car had completed countless flat out laps with the engine producing 400kw at the wheels, up from 300kw at the wheels - The driver tells me it was a terrific ride!

After finishing Haltech's latest Flat shifting calibrations a few more test laps had to be carried out. With no sign of trouble the car went out and successfully completed 2 more laps before finishing up on the side of the track leaving a trail of oil and plume of smoke behind it.

It was time to put it in the trailer and go back to the workshop to pull it down. After building up enough courage our in-house mechanic
removed the VR38DETT from the car and set it up on the engine stand.
A few hours later the engine was fully stripped and the damage to the engine was clear - It appears Haltech have found the limits of Nissans new super car!
The engine had met its maker.

Piston #1 and #3 had separated from their lower halves right through the center of the gudgeon pin. As the Conrod's had no piston's to guide them up and down the bore they started smashing the bore, block, oil pump, sump and anything else that got in their way.

Due to the massive damage to the block we will need to replace it. And figure it's a great time to make the engine a little stronger. We will be boring the motor out and installing Darton sleeves, replacing the factory cast pistons with a study Forged unit as well as installing a set of Billet conrods. This should allow the engine to reliably produce
over 400Kw at the wheels and handle the pressure.
Interesting failure if what they say is true. Normally that kind of failure is due to over revving. Its always possible with track use. Depends on how their ECU and transmission ECU interact.

Failures suck, but give you a chance to build it bigger stronger.

2 comments:

MindlessOath said...

what other tuners have found out is that the R35 get to high in horse power it needs better cooling, especially on the track. cobb explained they needed an oil cooler for the engine oil because it was overheating.

i dont know if this has anything to do with this, i would imagine they watched the temps, but that doesnt mean the temp sensors couldnt fail or something else didnt go wrong. it could have just been an ecu program the R35 just didnt like.

536HP at the wheels has already been done with the HKS 570 kit. tho im not certain the exact hp to the wheels or the crank in either case.

Anonymous said...

Interesting, I'm surprised it failed at all with that amount of HP.I suspect it was an ecu problem that caused a lean condition which lead to detonation. It'd be nice to see the fuel map of that run.

Item Reviewed: More Information on the Haltech R35 Engine Failure Rating: 5 Reviewed By: Sean Morris