I only ever tracked mine at Croft and had zero gearbox issues. Spent a fair bit of time watching the oil temp and cooked the front tyres though.
The FK2 at the time was always reading high oil and water temps, so I wouldn't have thought Honda would have intentionally transferred one heat source build up into a system already known to be running hot. Unless they thought it could handle it.
interesting that i dont see any coolant issues.
i first started to see gearbox shift issues when i used cup2's. was more noticable with the AR1s the other month so appears to be tyre related. i assume it's because the tyres can handle more so the LSD is adding that bit more heat through corners to cause shift issues for me.
highest i've datalogged coolant is 112c.
You may well be right, but I think the location of the turbo has a lot to do with it, there is no space around it for air to circulate and thus cool, as such the heat just increases. The FK8 absorbs a lot of heat into the cabin akin to an Elise, I haven’t experienced that before in a FWD car, so ventilation into the engine bay is a definite issue in the FK8.
Does the intercooler block the rad in the FK2?
well the fk2 has turbo in same location and we dont see the issues the FK8 has. Looking at the engine bays, i'd say the FK8 would handle things better. Just seems a bit more open and not as confined as the FK2.
yes intercooler blocks the rad. i went for the TDI-North IC which is OEM-ish in size. also have a setrab 619 oil cooler (was 616 last trackday) thats in the top right side of grill. i typically run AC on track too so i'd say my setup should be worse than an OEM in terms of the air temp when it actually gets to the coolant rad.
the yanks (and i'm sure others) have spend a lot of time with turbo blankets, grills, rads, oil coolers, vented bonnets etc and they haven't yet found a solution. Even with an open grill and bigger rad there should've been an improvement but still reports with overheating. I dont beleive it's an airflow or radiant heat issue. IMO theres either excessive heat INTO the system (eg: gearbox water oil cooler), or theres a coolant flow issue specific to FK8.
i guess there could be some weird aero thing where the air stalls or does something weird at certain speeds but that seems unlikely. i've seen a number of people comment that the bonnet area should be air-out only (as confirmed by practically every bonnet mod or race car), and not air in so calls into question why Honda fitted a intake scoop. I'm sure honda have a reason, but it's not obvious. Its not like it has a TMIC that needs it. Infact it seems to cause issues by letting rain into one of the spark plug bores!