How we’re going to keep our V6 MR2 properly lubricated

J.G.
Update by J.G. Pasterjak to the Toyota MR2 Turbo project car
Oct 31, 2023 | Toyota, MR2, MR2 Turbo, Toyota MR2 Turbo, 2GR-FE

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Photography by J.G. Pasterjak

You’ll often hear oil referred to as the lifeblood of an engine. While this metaphor stretches things a bit, it is true that if you lose all of each fluid–or it gets hot to the point of chemical failure–bad things will happen.

We recommend avoiding both situations.

You’re on your own for the blood thing, but we have taken several steps to keep the oil in our 2GR-FE V6-powered Toyota MR2 happy.

[Our Toyota MR2 Turbo, now with 100% less turbo]

To do that, let’s trace the oil as it leaves the engine and flows into our supplemental measures before returning to the powerplant fully refreshed.

The oil exits the engine from this Wilhelm Raceworks adapter that bolts to the stock oil cooler exit.

In most 2GR-FE applications, this is simply a bypass, but in certain applications, like Siennas with tow packages, this provides oil flow to an engine coolant-regulated oil cooler.

In our application, we’ll use the Wilhelm adapter to attach a couple of -10AN hoses. This view is looking backward toward the back of the car, with your head directly under the back of the passenger seat. The line on your right is the exit from the engine, and the line on the left is the return.

Now we’ve turned 90 degrees and are standing directly under the center of the car, facing the passenger side.

The exit line we just saw is the one coming directly toward us. It takes a gentle 180-degree turn and heads up along the firewall.

The first stop is a supplemental manifold from Improved Racing.

This clever manifold is simply a pass-through with a -10 ORB inlet and outlet and two 1/8 NPT ports for installing sensors.

In our case, we’ll use one port for an oil temperature sensor and one for an oil pressure sensor. You’ll also see a third sensor in a single 1/8 NPT port on the outlet. That’s the trigger for our Derale oil cooler fans.

Now we’re on the passenger side of the car, looking up into the cubby where the intercooler used to reside inside the right-rear fender. It made a perfect spot for our Derale oil cooler and its dual fans.

At this point, we haven’t built any shrouding or ducting to the cooler from the opening in the side of the car, but those fans should pull plenty of air through the fins of the cooler regardless of channeling.

In the shot taken before the engine was installed, you can see how the 19-row Derale Hyper-Cool Dual tucks neatly away. completely out of the engine bay into the fender. We made a simple bracket for the bottom tabs and attached the top tabs directly to the wall of the engine bay.

The input is on the left–that’s the line coming from the Improved Racing manifold–and the outlet is on the right.

Following the exit line from the oil cooler, it heads back toward the firewall where it hits this Y-connection.

The inlet from the cooler is the lower of the two insulated lines, and the line heading directly toward the camera is the return to the engine–the one that will contain cool oil.

The upper insulated line leaving the top of the Y goes…

…up and over the passenger-side engine mount to a grommeted hole connecting to the rear trunk, where it meets…

…a Moroso oil accumulator.

We attached the brackets to the trunk floor with nutserts and bolted the 3-quart accumulator in place.

An oil accumulator works similarly to one of those pressure tanks you might find on an irrigation or drinking water system–assuming it’s one that gets water from a well.

In our case, a pressurized chamber inside the cylinder pushes on 3 quarts of stored oil. When the prevailing pressure of the oil system drops below the pressure in the chamber, it pushes that stored oil into the system to maintain total system pressure.

A manual shutoff valve comes preinstalled, and we also added an electric solenoid valve so we don’t have to manually activate the shutoff. We mounted the solenoid on a small piece of high-density foam to give it some vibration isolation.

The final piece of our outside-the-engine oil control strategy is a Moroso air-oil separator.

This will take blowby from the valve cover. A line will run back to the intake manifold to relieve pressure, and the drain line will be plumbed directly back into the oil pan.

2GR-FE engines are known for blowing a bit of oil out of the top of the engine in extreme-use cases, so we want a path for that oil to be easily recycled back into the crankcase and not constantly filling the air/oil separator catch can.

We previously took precautions inside the engine to keep our oil pickup wet and keep pressure up, but when it comes to lubrication, overkill is never a bad idea.

You also might notice that we chose not to run an oil thermostat in our system. Well, we have one, and it fits, but at this time, we’re leaving it out until we get some initial temperature data on track once the car is running.

Our rationale there is since this will be primarily a track car, its primary use is going to be pretty hard. It’s not going to see any street time, so it’s always going to be operating in a mode where it’s going to produce sufficient stress on the oil to bring it to temperature.

Also, that’s fewer hose connections and fewer complications, and simplicity always seems to be a solid plan.

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Comments
gixxeropa
gixxeropa GRM+ Memberand Reader
10/31/23 9:38 a.m.

We've found in the motorcycle engined cars my class runs, that oil temps are at least as important as coolant temps, so we run a very similar system to the one in the MR2, except we just put the biggest oil cooler we can in one of the sidepods with no fans, just ducting. The common wisdom is that the Setrab oil coolers seems to be noticeably better than the others.

kaybat
kaybat New Reader
10/31/23 1:53 p.m.

"You're on your own with the blood thing"     

Good Stuff!!

300zxfreak
300zxfreak Reader
10/31/23 2:20 p.m.

Very interesting, I have a Setrab oil cooler in my '90 300ZX TT, but  had not thought of adding cooling fan.....I need to look at this seriously. The Setrab and some mods to the cooling system have worked wonders in keeping temps down, but anything more I can do can't be a bad thing.

te72
te72 HalfDork
10/31/23 8:41 p.m.

I installed a rather large Setrab oil cooler for the Supra project, no complaints there. It's wedged between the intercooler and coolant radiator, all ducted.

 

Personally, I would think a mid engine setup would want ducting to feed that cooler, but that's just me. I very much subscribe to the school of thought that air is lazy, so if you don't force it to work for you... it won't.

JG Pasterjak
JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director
10/31/23 9:04 p.m.
te72 said:

I installed a rather large Setrab oil cooler for the Supra project, no complaints there. It's wedged between the intercooler and coolant radiator, all ducted.

 

Personally, I would think a mid engine setup would want ducting to feed that cooler, but that's just me. I very much subscribe to the school of thought that air is lazy, so if you don't force it to work for you... it won't.

Technically it doesn't have any less ducting than the original intercooler. It's fed by the side intake which does a pretty good job of bringing in fresh air, I just didn't build any specific ducting so air can also get around the cooler into the engine compartment. From there I've got two Derale fans that will mount on the engine lid and suck air up out of the engine compartment. So I kind of made the initial choice in favor of total air volume into the engine bay and max flow-through.

te72
te72 HalfDork
11/2/23 12:52 a.m.

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

Interesting, I didn't realize that the stock stuff wasn't ducted. That's kinda unlike Toyota, in my experience. MR2's are a bit... different, is what I'm finding out with my AW11.

 

I would imagine that the cooler fans should help keep things in check. Where else does the car get fresh air from? SW20's had two engine bay intakes, correct? If so, I'd personally try to make one by 3d printing a simple duct. Mine on the Supra were fabricated with aluminum sheet, rivets, and some sealant. Not what you call pretty, but they work very well. The last heat exchanger in the line, the radiator, only sees temps over 190° after particularly hard autocross runs on small lots. Then the fans kick on and things are back to normal within a minute.

 

Also worth considering, your engine consumes 3.5L of air *per complete cycle*. How many liters of space are there in the entire engine bay? ...and at 5000+ rpm, how often must that engine bay air be refreshed by atmospheric pressure? Math's fun sometimes. =P

hybridmomentspass
hybridmomentspass Dork
11/6/23 2:43 p.m.

The stock MR2 intercooler does have ducting, and many/most of the aftermarket IC kits include a block off plate. 

Alex W, if I remember right, makes oil cooler setups for the SW20 which includes a block off plate/surround 

Im certain JG could fab something up for his setup.

 

I love this build, Always awesome to see a MKII get love

clutchmaster
clutchmaster New Reader
11/29/23 3:55 p.m.

I know it's been a while. Have you checked your pressure when the accumulator is discharging? is there no need for a check valve to stop back flow toward the oil cooler? Lastly, were you able to install the oil cooler with the engine in?

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