250cc 4 cylinders

[pengulns2001]

anyone know where i can purchase one online or even from a junkyard i cant find anything not even parts... any help would be appreciated

[jack]

did you try japan?

[pengulns2001]

no, i cant really afford to go over there right now either know any good websites lol? preferably in english... im not the kind of person to come on here and ask obvious questions so believe me ive tried if im missing something obvious im sorry

[James Waltman]

All of the parts for the WWU V8 came from Metropolitan Motorcycle Spares.
I believe this is them: http://www.motorcyclewreckers.com/
That was for a Kawasaki ZXR-250. As far as I know, that bike was only available in Japan and Australia. Can any of you guys in Europe confirm or deny this?

[MarcG]

The 250cc motors we have used at UTA are imported from Japan. Australia and possibly the U.K. also have these bikes (Honda CBR250).

[Homemade WRX]

for any of the 250's they were made in japan and a fairly large amount were imported to Australia and a decent amount to the UK....very very few are stateside and are only race bike ($$$)...found one in Jersey for $7k (whole bike)...
meanwhile tracked down 3 in aus...about $600-700 per

[RonBurgundy01]

There is a place over here in Australia called Victorian Motorcycle Wreckairs.

They are amazing for any engines that you require. They have a full floor to roof rack of 250cc Inline Fours.

I don't know if this helps you ornot coz it'd probably be costly to import one from over here, but hey, look into it.

Good Luck

Matt

[Homemade WRX]

I was checking with them back in May and they said they didn't want to ship to the US...don't know why...
I have managed to find 3 CBR250RR's on my own though...and yes shipping is about $900-1000 Aus for a single engine...
still trying to find a cheaper freight company but is nearly impossible from my side of the water...
anyone wanna help? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[RonBurgundy01]

Micah,

I'd love to give you a hand bro but as you can imagine, i'm flat out trying to get our car built! If somehow the planets all allign or something and we get our car built early...actually, i am not even gonna offer coz it ain't gonna happen.

Good luck man

Matt

[KevinD]

with all due respect Micah,

unless you have some serious manpower, cash, and resources to get absolutely anything done, the 250 is going to kick your ass. there are a number of things you need to know about this engine. the first of which is that they don't make new ones anymore. the second (and by far the most important) 250's don't like (any) Gee's. third, high revs mean very finicky crank pickup, of which many ECUS will not even operate in that range. fourth, your importing them from japan/aus and that took a couple of months to get through customs for us. you cannot order parts you need and expect them the next day... it takes a week at the least, and beleive me, come the last week of april it will be a problem. fifth, 250 clutches don't like lots of power. sixth, good luck finding a manual for it... basically i would be sure you have a japanese student willing to help you out, it will make your life much easier. and last, unless you have number 2 figured out, 3 engines wont be enough.

if you do manage to get everything worked out alright, they are by far the best sounding engines out there for FSAE and they do pack a serious punch. good luck man, you are going to need it if thats the route you are going.


oh yeah, one other thing... better start getting turbos too cause we blew through two of them. we went with the IHI option and they are very hard to come by.

[Homemade WRX]

hey kevin....you bring up several good points...all to which I have anticipated except for them being so finicky about G's...guess I would need a nice dry sump...

for EM I'm working with a company that most on here have probably never heard of and well that is still being worked out...

already have found two low priced ($250) IHI turbos (appropriately sized) that will be for starters I guess http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

the manual issue, I've contacts (250 bike racers) that speak english and know the motor inside and out...

yes, they stopped production in 98 and last model year was 99 (left over 98's)

clutch: the only real unresolved issue...just limits the power the bike can make...unless I can magically get a fewed favors pull...then see how the tranny will like life :lol:

out of curiosity what was the big hang up in customs that took months?...they are only motors?...also when did you buy your 5...back in 98 and 99...ask only because some of the laws have changed...

also doing the build as a senior project..part of the project being the debated restrictor location (before and after the turbo)...

so the engine's I'm getting probably won't be used this year for anything other than data to the judges as to why a NA 600 is better (rolls eyes)...

[KevinD]

yeah without question you will not be able to use the stock oiling system. dry sumping it will work, but remember you are adding weight... there are other solutions, but i'll leave it at that.

not sure what the big hangup with customs was. i just know we had to wait a long time for them. we had 3 engines from 98-99 and we got 3 more last summer/fall. every single one of them have blown, some of them multiple times.

the good thing to know though, if you are extremely careful, and pay very close attention to detail, you wont blow engines. the 250 is the most unforgiving engine you can get.

here is a listing of the problems we had this year:

engine #1: we installed in the 99 car, and Dr woods took it out to test it himself. it lasted about 5-10 minutes before he blew a hole through two of the pistons. it was a result of poor tuning and not using the wideband/daq to monitor what was going on.

engine #2: was built with new bearings/seals/pistons but was assembled using a 20 dollar torque wrench which turned out to be very very wrong. needless to say the crank bearings were overtorqued and when we were trying to run it it was difficult to turn over, because it was the bearings being torn apart.

engine #3: was blown because of poor advice and bad decision making when i was gone for my friends wedding. long story and i wont go any further.

engine #4: was the engine rex and i built from scraps from all the blown engines. we built it in california while the car was in line for tech inspection. it lasted about 10 minutes until a rod broke and smashed a hole through the case doing the brake test. thats what you get when you build engines from scraps of blown engines.

[pengulns2001]

all 4 of those failures are completly the teams fault i dont think its fair to say the engine is unforgiving... if you did the same to 4 f4i's they all would have blown

[KevinD]

yes i agree they were our faults. my point was that unless you are playing super close attention all the time, you will make a mistake and the engine doesn't forgive you.

with the 600 you can be way off on the tune and the engine will still run. with the 250, if you are off even a little at full throttle you have just toasted it. the 600 in that respect is very forgiving.... particularly because you are not even close to pushing the limit of the engine. the 250 is running at double the output it was designed for.


anyway, you are right, all those failures could have been prevented (except for the torque wrench one, which we didn't catch until after the engine was toasted). but if you want to believe the 250 is forgiving, go ahead and run it http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif you will change your mind very quickly, i promise.

[pengulns2001]

im not really worried about it being forgiven im sure its not... we would be pushing an engine FAR past its design intentions. but tuning is not a problem and i would never use a cheap tq wrench on an engine ive heard to many horror stories like yours... your right though the 600 is exceptionally forgiving but then again so is the 250 when you consider what we are doing to them

[Kenny]

Wow Kev.....that's some really bad luck.

This is going to be long, butI have to defend the 250 here because it really is an awesome engine, and it will take the power density punishment of turbocharging very well. The first one we did in 98 lasted through 5 mock endurances, Detroit FSAE, F-Student UK, and an entire summer of autocrossing and suspension testing (much of it on the skidpad). It did all this even BEFORE I fixed the oil starvation problem (it did eventually spin a rod bearing). In every competition the 250's saw through 98 and 99, it posted the fastest single lap time in endurance, and even won acceleration in England 99.

The reliability is there also. The engine you guys took out of 99 last November (still alive, just tired) was an engine I built as a backup during skidpad/acceleration at Detroit in 99, and had been in there through 2 years of me and Woods pounding on it. Woods has blown the tops off of 2 engines now (he's getting good at it) but both failures were caused by freak failures of the manifold pressure x-ducer (I think 99 need its wiring looked at). Now in all fairness, I don't think you can run a 250 season after season with little or no internal maintenance like you can with the 600's. I would change out all main bearings, rod bearings, and rod bolts at the end of every season to keep from having a catastrophic bottom end failure.

As far as being forgiving, well there is only so much forgiveness in any engine. Before you go blaming high revs, "poor advice", quirky ECU's, and $20 torque wrenches, you should take a REALLY long look at the people who built your now dead engines, and the installation of your timing wheel.

The 250 is a great choice for FSAE. It's a handful to drive, and you do have to be extremely meticulous with it, but treat it nicely and it will serve you well. Plus, there is nothing like that 19,000 rpm scream.

Kenny

[KevinD]

kenny, you failed to mention how you had to rebuild the engine every night at was it, the 98 or 99 competition? or how you blew a few engines from what was "bad oil", or how a few engines came with rags included in them... you know as well as i do how much attention needs to be paid to them. and yeah you are right... the person who built one of the dead engines was you. and after competition woods mentioned that engine had been rebuilt by you guys multiple times, and that it "had been down on power". brilliant.

and interestingly, you mentioned the installation of the timing wheel. there was never anything wrong with the timing wheel installation. it was the people who who said it was 45 degrees off that had it wrong. they were the people who didn't put the engine at TDC before claiming it was 45 degrees off. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

[Homemade WRX]

well, before we start fueding...

I was curious as to using a cam position sensor and cam pickup as a crank signal....time to call my EM guy again

[Jeff The Pyro]

just out of curiosity, how much do one of those motors weigh?

[KevinD]

cam position sensor for ecu is highly recommended. we didn't have the time to implement anything of the sort but if you can do it, do it. sequential fuel injection will greatly help out your duty cycles as well.


our entire engine package was about 30 pounds lighter then the entire 600cc engine package.

[Homemade WRX]

I had already planned on sequential...have control of 8 injectors...