Racing Prius?

[Family Hybrid]

You wanted specs on that FSP Prius, you got it:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...blogID=44975985

I showed this to my wife and she said "NO!, You already have a race toy." I guess I will just have to "borrow" her car for a Sunday drive.

[patsparks]

Has anyone thought about fitting a second standard battery pack for more hybrid oomph? Isn't it one of the highest energy density batteries around? Safer and lighter than lead acid. If it's purely for racing remove the back seat and put extra batteries in that space. For a standard look put the seat cover back over tha battery. Will another hybrid battery like from a Camry or the SUV version sold in USA fit in place of the back seat.
Not cheap but nothing is in racing.

Change the head on the Atkinson cycle engine, there is nothing wrong with the Atkinson cycle crank position, it's the late closing inlet valves that reduce power. Will the Yaris head fit? You need to remap the VVTi, EFI, and ignition as well.

[kohnen]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Jul 27 2007, 09:02 PM) [snapback]486479[/snapback]</div>

Change the head on the Atkinson cycle engine, there is nothing wrong with the Atkinson cycle crank position, it's the late closing inlet valves that reduce power. Will the Yaris head fit? You need to remap the VVTi, EFI, and ignition as well.
[/b]

Um,

The thing that makes it an Atkinson cycle is the late intake valve closing. The offset crank position is done to reduce friction; the Otto cycle Yaris engine does the same thing.

So, I guess I don't quite understand your point. Could you clarify?

[JaviNOS]

you could go from atkinson to otto.. get everything trd offers.. and toms...
then there is not much going on for the engine performance but you could try and fit a cold air intake even if its a custom built one (but thats when you go to the otto cycle).. then you should go lighter... a lot...
get rid of everything... the seats, the dash, the speakers.... then maybe just maybe you're getting somewhere...

if you succeed in the otto conversion and get something like a yaris engine you may find a few stuff to pump up power...

and most of all some $$$ and some luck and some good connections or convincing attitude to get some sponsorship its not an easy task but good luck

[V8Cobrakid]

I've been thinking about this one for a while.

A couple years back, I went to the autocross in oakland.... er... i think it's oakland. ( i don't cruise there often )

I believe there is a hybrid category. The people were excited to see me. several people commented that they wanted to see a prius try it. I was told i did pretty good. I was not the lowest time. ( i can't recall the numbers )

my tips: make your car a semi plug in. this way your main battery will always be full. ( at the end of the race my battery was dead. I had to force charge it. ) Don't force charge. it's bad on performance. ( this is why i say phev ) stiffen the entire car with all the braces you can. replace the suspension. Don't increase the brakes. you'll wreck the whole point of the car. If you want to brake faster, just hit them harder ( it's not all that bad )
Turbo charge it. Pay a shop to pick one out and install it. try to make them give you a warranty on their work, the unit, and the stability of the prius. ( good luck on that one. i wouldn't try it.) Leave the exhaust alone. Leave the intake alone. ( changing those would kill the purpose of the car )

Have fun. take as many pics as you can. post them all. start a webpage. share it here. Let me drive your car ( last one optional of course)

I side on the opinion of not destroying the car. It's a clean hybrid. Leave it as a clean hybrid. Make it an awsome racing... clean hybrid.

just my $0.02 cents..... sorry.. that's my fee. i don't like donating ( just kidding)

[HighBreed]

It's nice to show the world that you can have fun too autocrossing a Prius on weekends.

[fruzzetti]

There are a lot of good ideas on this forum. In fact, there are enough to start someone tinkering who has the time and car.

But you guys are NOT thinking about how to really optimize the car; we should be playing into its strengths and compensating for weaknesses.

(1) Manual control over the CVT ratio range. Give me a lever like any stickshift, with a short throw and the ability to move in two directions smoothly: toward me (higher gears; higher speed) and away from me (lower gears; higher acceleration). And it needs to have much faster reflexes.

(2) Don't commit suicide replacing the weird ICE. Play to its low-RPM strengths. It works, therefore it is ready to be improved upon. More aggressive fuelling with computer-controlled NO2 injection, alongside a more open exhaust system, should get you an easy 20-40 safe horsepower; probably substantially more if you're willing to start taking risks or having parts machined in more exotic materials. This is a very good route, though!

(3) You don't want to upgrade the batteries until you're absolutely sure you need to. Remember, gas mileage isn't a problem, so running the engine constantly to keep the batteries charged is also not a problem, especially considering the nitrous oxide power boost.

(4) If you DO think you need a battery upgrade, it's because you're right and you've taken the wisest of all electric drivetrain upgrade decisions: in-hub rear-wheel motors calibrated to throttle computer to match the front-end drivetrain.

It needs to be reclassified after these alterations as a "multiply parallel hybrid electric" vehicle, but so what? You have a synthetic all wheel drive system that has flexibilities unheard-of up to now - before that the slowest relative speed you could apply at one tire was zero. Now one wheel can turn backwards to change the drift pattern or automatically help recover from a spin.

Dot, dot, dot...

~ dan ~

And yes, I know it would require infinite money, infinite monkeys, and infinite typewriters... But if I had anywhere near infinite money I'd already be making my race Prius :P

[JaviNOS]

Originally Posted by fruzzetti

There are a lot of good ideas on this forum. In fact, there are enough to start someone tinkering who has the time and car.

But you guys are NOT thinking about how to really optimize the car; we should be playing into its strengths and compensating for weaknesses.

(1) Manual control over the CVT ratio range. Give me a lever like any stickshift, with a short throw and the ability to move in two directions smoothly: toward me (higher gears; higher speed) and away from me (lower gears; higher acceleration). And it needs to have much faster reflexes.

(2) Don't commit suicide replacing the weird ICE. Play to its low-RPM strengths. It works, therefore it is ready to be improved upon. More aggressive fuelling with computer-controlled NO2 injection, alongside a more open exhaust system, should get you an easy 20-40 safe horsepower; probably substantially more if you're willing to start taking risks or having parts machined in more exotic materials. This is a very good route, though!

(3) You don't want to upgrade the batteries until you're absolutely sure you need to. Remember, gas mileage isn't a problem, so running the engine constantly to keep the batteries charged is also not a problem, especially considering the nitrous oxide power boost.

(4) If you DO think you need a battery upgrade, it's because you're right and you've taken the wisest of all electric drivetrain upgrade decisions: in-hub rear-wheel motors calibrated to throttle computer to match the front-end drivetrain.

It needs to be reclassified after these alterations as a "multiply parallel hybrid electric" vehicle, but so what? You have a synthetic all wheel drive system that has flexibilities unheard-of up to now - before that the slowest relative speed you could apply at one tire was zero. Now one wheel can turn backwards to change the drift pattern or automatically help recover from a spin.

Dot, dot, dot...

~ dan ~

And yes, I know it would require infinite money, infinite monkeys, and infinite typewriters... But if I had anywhere near infinite money I'd already be making my race Prius :P

I completely agree... could not say it any better... than what you just did Fruzzetti

[fruzzetti]

Imagine using that CVT for a drag racing car. The engine could be tuned totally differently than usual. Instead of trying to have a reasonably high, mostly level power curve, you could align freakishly steep torque and power curves with enormously high, but short, peaks; then you use the CVT to just keep the engine in the high-power range for the whole trip. You could shave half a second off any car's ET and it frees you to develop an engine with a less balanced design which also means less cost.

~ dan ~

[slvr_phoenix]

Hi everyone and thanks for the input. Between hectic life changes (new relationship, moving cross country, job change) I just haven't had money and time to do much with my Prius. And with all of the problems I had just accessing this forum, I'd kind of forgotten it even existed for a good while.

But every so often I wistfully think of making my Prius proud, and I finally buggered back here to ask some more and see what's up.

So I had this thought. I read in several articles on the Landspeed Prius project that they replaced the stock Prius gas engine with a stock Yaris gas engine. (Since they're essentially the same engine just without the artificial limiter in the Prius to improve gas milage.) Yet in all of the articles I look at now, every one of them claims the Landspeed Prius was a totally stock Prius engine. 1 - What's up with that? Were they lying back then about using a Yaris engine or lying now about it being a Prius stock engine? And 2 - Can we Prius owners just switch the Prius engine back to a Yaris engine by removing / changing a couple of parts?

Because as far as I can tell from what research I can manage with Google, the Prius engine is just a Yaris engine with the redline knocked 1000RPM and the computer instructed to never redline the engine. (Which probably removes yet another 500-1000RPM.) But other than that, they're the same engine.

Why is this so important? Well look at the stats. Same engine: Prius 76hp / 85fl-lb torque vs Yaris 106hp / 103ft/lb torque. So if Prius owners could make this change, you're talking about an upgrade of 30hp and 18ft-lb torque. I'd kill to just be able to remove that artificial limit in the Prius to suddenly gain that much. But can it be done, and if so, how?

It's also nice to see some real brakes being worked on for the Prius. I know the regenerative braking of the Prius engages most of the time so the real brakes are barely used. But the Prius has one major flaw in its braking system: the traction control. As soon as any tiny loss of traction kicks in the Prius stops using the regenerative braking. So all of the sudden your only braking comes from those crappy little grossly undersized brakes on the wheels. And drum brakes in rear at that! It's a legitimate danger in snow. And it's a legitimate danger when racing. So changing out the stock brakes for real ones would at least make the Prius safe in both inclement weather and in racing. In my opinion every Prius owner should seriously look into that just for safety reasons. I've been complaining about this problem with the Prius almost since I first got mine, since I was going through a Wisconsin winter just months after purchase. It's scary. It's dangerous. And I still can't believe Toyota hasn't been forced into a recall because of it.

(Sheesh do I wish I could just disable the traction control on the Prius. In Wisconsin it has almost been the cause of more accidents than it has ever "saved" me from. Every time I have to drive my Prius on rain, snow, or ice I shudder and hover one hand over the engine brake. And don't even get me started on the winter MPG loss...)

But I also agree that the Prius just plain sits too high for racing. A suspension change to lower it would be a must. I know the TRD suspension kit for the Prius lowers it a little, but I have to wonder if there aren't even lower suspensions for the Prius out there. I don't want Landspeed Prius low, just ... lower.

And if I could afford all of this (hopefully ... one day) I'd also most definitely look into a plug-in mod with extra battery. To green-line the battery charge and super-size that green-line runtime would make a huge difference in performance. And the regular driving MPG boost from making it a plug-in should more than offset the MPG loss from engine and tire upgrades.

So again thanks for the input folks. Let's keep the thought alive! What new products and thoughts
can we throw at making the Prius something to turn heads, not as a pretentious green machine, but as a fast and sexy green machine.