Do I Need a Power Steering Cooler?

Do I Need a Power Steering Cooler?

You know you need to upgrade your power steering setup. Maybe the factory system is having trouble keeping up with your on-track performance, maybe your factory hoses are just past their prime and starting to show their leaky age, or maybe your reservoir is cracked or just ugly. 


After doing your research, you’ve discovered our standard-setting power steering kits, and you know they’re the best on the market. You’re ready to order. You’re clicking through the options and you reach one that you’re not sure about - whether to add a cooler or not. Should you? Is it necessary? Is the money better spent elsewhere? 


In most cases, the answer is yes, you should buy the cooler. But, of course, it’s (a little) more nuanced than that. 


Most important in making this decision is how are you setting up and using the car? Are you planning to run lots of front grip, or wide, sticky front tires? Are you adding steering angle? Are you planning to track the car at all? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then you should run a cooler. 


Yes, we realize that this describes almost any scenario in which any of us modify our cars. So the opposite question is valid, when would you not run a cooler, and why do we offer kits without them if we recommend them in almost every scenario? These are offered for unmodified, otherwise generally stock, non-track cars, where owners simply need a reliable, simple, affordable upgrade to replace worn, leaking stock components and keep their car working well. 


Simply put, for a relatively stock, street-driven car, a cooler isn’t necessary, but for a more highly modified car or anything that will see track usage, the best move is to get the cooler. 



December 07, 2023 by Chase Bays
Compact Windshield Washer Reservoir: Possibly Our Most Versatile Product

Compact Windshield Washer Reservoir: Possibly Our Most Versatile Product

Our Windshield Washer Reservoir/Intercooler Sprayer (WWR) could possibly be our most versatile product. Beyond the two uses in the title, it has also found use as a radiator and tire sprayer. It’s a sleek, compact design offering five different bracket options for easy mounting and has some clever features!


We have a lot of experience making vented, but baffled, reservoir caps from our power steering reservoir, so we put that to work here. Our cap is vented to allow air in when fluid is pumped out, but baffled so fluid can’t escape. 


Our pumps are a reliable, simple design that’s commonly available and easily replaced in the event that it fails after many years of use. It’s mounted with a single allen bolt, and only needs a simple power and ground connection to run. We include a pigtail so you can wire it into your factory switched circuit, or another circuit of your design. 


As the name suggests, the WWR was originally designed to be a compact and aesthetically pleasing alternative to large, ugly factory washer fluid reservoirs. Any builder knows that reclaiming a bit of engine bay space, while maintaining washer function and cleaning up aesthetics is a triple win, and the WWR is the cost effective solution that we created when we simply couldn’t find anything good enough. 


Years of experience with a variety of reservoirs have allowed us to develop versatile options for mounting, and our WWR is available with any of our standard five bracket options 


It’s worth noting that the motor does not have a built-in check valve, and will allow fluid to flow in both directions. This isn’t an issue where the reservoir is mounted low and feeding the washer nozzles on the hood, any fluid draining back through the lines will simply collect back in the reservoir. However, if the reservoir is mounted higher than the nozzle (as in a sprayer for an intercooler, radiator or tire), a check valve can be helpful to prevent leakage. 


One frequent question we get is whether the methanol or ethelyne glycol in washer fluid would be corrosive to their aluminum intercooler or radiator. While it’s true that these chemicals are corrosive to aluminum when they are pure, in washer fluid, they are present in limited amounts - about 40% methanol and 1% ethylene glycol, and many years of usage have proven that they won’t present an issue in these concentrations. However, if you’re concerned, for an intercooler sprayer setup, you can always use pure water. 

Our Compact Windshield Washer Fluid Reservoir/Intercooler (or Tire- or Radiator-) Sprayer is a great addition to any build. Grab one, or a few, for your ride! 



November 29, 2023 by Chase Bays
Why You Need a Power Steering Upgrade

Why You Need a Power Steering Upgrade

Introduction

In nearly a decade of engineering and manufacturing the most complete, easily installed, durable and aesthetically pleasing power steering solutions on the market, we’ve learned a few things. We wanted to share a bit about what we’ve learned and how we’ve applied that to make our products the best in the industry. 

Triple Baffled Power Steering Fluid Reservoir

At the core of each kit is our industry-exclusive triple baffled power steering reservoir. The result of years of engineering starting with advanced computational fluid dynamics and honed on the track - both in drift and grip competition - there’s simply no equal. 

 

 

Power steering fluid has a demanding task in a track environment, and commonly can be found pushing out of reservoir caps under heavy use, especially when high speeds, extreme steering angles, aggressive aerodynamics and big, sticky tires are in the mix. Frequently assumed to be boiling, this is actually the result of foaming and aeration as fluid is returned to the reservoir at extremely high flow rates and pressures up to 120psi. 

 

Our reservoir has unique internal baffling to reduce that 120psi return fluid to 12psi in only two inches of fluid motion. No more aeration. No more spillover. 

 

Power steering systems need to be vented for proper operation as a loop hydraulic system. Since a simple vent hole could allow for fluid to push out, we needed to engineer a solution that would allow air to pass freely without allowing fluid to escape, and we did. Our unique baffled caps are the third of the baffles in the reservoir and set the Chase Bays product apart from the many imitators. 

We didn’t stop on the inside. Our reservoir is equipped with versatile mounting solutions for any of our five bracket styles, or a bracket of your own fabrication. For a very simple mounting solution, the M8x1.25 threaded holes in the side can be used for direct-mounting to your vehicle! 

 

Hoses

Each of our power steering kits utilizes top-shelf Brown and Miller Racing (BMRS) hoses and fittings, the same components found in NASCAR, Indy Car and IMSA race cars. We use 10AN and 6AN sizes, with appropriate adapters for direct fitment to your vehicle. Our team fabricates and individually tests each hose here in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Using high-quality hoses and fittings is critical to avoiding leaks and aeration, barb fittings and hose clamps are the common sources of power steering systems leaking fluid out or pulling air in during heavy performance usage. 

Coolers

Our Power Steering Kits will vastly improve the durability and aesthetics of your power steering system. In many cases, it makes sense to add a dedicated power steering cooler to reduce temperatures and increase overall fluid capacity in the system. Unlike engine oil that needs to warm up, there’s never a situation where having power steering fluid circulating through a cooler presents any concern, so if packaging and budget allow, we absolutely recommend adding a cooler to every system when possible. In fact, in some applications, we have found that a cooler is absolutely necessary for the longevity of functionality, and in those, our kits are only available with an included cooler. 

We offer two proven styles of cooler, an inline finned heatsink design and a 10-row, drawn-cup style, both featuring 6AN inlet/outlet fittings, black finishes and mounting bosses made for simple, sleek and aesthetically pleasing installations. Our inline style cooler is found as an option in our kits and is proven to reduce temperatures by up to 20°F, but the most extreme situations can step up to our 10-row drawn-cup cooler. 

 

Conclusion 

No more leaks, no more spillover. A better engineered system that’s more aesthetically pleasing. A system that you can stop thinking about, and just enjoy how your car drives. That’s what you get with our Power Steering Kits. Ready to upgrade your car? Find your kit now! 

 

November 15, 2023 by Chase Bays
Why Our Coolant Reservoir is the Best Coolant Reservoir

Why Our Coolant Reservoir is the Best Coolant Reservoir

 Coolant overflow reservoirs are one of the many things we need on our cars, but can be one of those details that can be an annoyance when finishing your build. OE reservoirs are bulky. They’re plastic, and prone to cracking with age. They’re just plain ugly, and their placement is often inconvenient for modified or swapped engine bays. 

 Fortunately for your build, Chase Bays has come to the rescue with the ultimate coolant overflow reservoir. This isn’t just another offering, it’s the standard by which all other solutions should be judged. 

We started by selecting the best material for the job, 6061 aluminum, anodized in a sleek, black finish. No rust, no cracking, no matter how many heat cycles. Then we got to work packing in all the important features to make it the best solution possible.  

Coolant expands and contracts with heat cycles, so some sort of container is necessary to capture the overflow when the engine is warm and return it to the radiator as it cools off. The system needs to be vented, so that coolant can flow back and forth unhindered. Seems simple enough. 

In heavy usage, there can be a lot of rapid expansion. High engine, and water pump, speeds push coolant through the system, and into the reservoir, very quickly, and at high pressures. These factors can cause coolant to push out of the reservoir vent, creating a mess, and requiring you to have to top off the coolant. Not ideal. 

 

 

OE reservoirs avoid these issues by sheer size, being oversized relative to the amount of coolant that would push back and forth. This allows for a simple vent near the cap, often with a hose to direct any overflowing coolant downward. Almost all the time, their sheer size means there’s plenty of room for expansion before they overflow. But, you’re left with a massive, ugly, plastic reservoir taking up way too much space. 

We prefer sleek and clever solutions. Many other offerings on the market simply copy, and downsize, the OE strategy of a vented cap and single port for coolant to move back and forth. These are a smaller package, but with performance limitations. Under heavy usage, they lack the volume to deal with the amount and pressure of coolant overflow, and you end up with a mess to clean up from coolant spewing out of the vent all over your engine bay.

At best this is an annoyance of cleanup and coolant top-off. In motorsport settings, fluids dumping on the track is downright dangerous, and something that sanctioning bodies universally frown upon. 

Our Chase Bays overflow reservoir solves this with a clever, dual-port configuration. The first inlet/outlet port connects to the radiator as you’d expect. The secondary, venting and overflow port, is unique in that it extends nearly to the top of the reservoir. This means that even when coolant is being pushed into the reservoir under high pressures, it has to find its way into and down this extended port to push out. This unique solution also means that whatever coolant does find its way out of the vent can be directed where you want - it doesn’t simply spew out wherever it wants to go. Our solution is legal for motorsports use, including in FormulaDRIFT, IMSA and most other sanctioning bodies. 

 

Where to route this? For street- or show-oriented cars, this can be routed to the ground, similar to how OE systems are configured. For motorsport-oriented builds, this can be routed to a secondary Chase Bays coolant reservoir, to ensure that coolant doesn’t get dumped on the track. 

How to mount the reservoir? We don’t re-use OE mounting configurations that may lock you into inconvenient placement, nor do we believe that flimsy, one-size-fits-none brackets are what our customers deserve. We offer five different bracket configurations, plus reservoir mounting that allows for direct, bracket-less mounting or, for unique installations, allows for easy fabrication of your own bracket. 

 

Ready to get the best coolant overflow reservoir for your build? Check it out and order here

November 08, 2023 by Chase Bays
Single- or Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete, What's Right For Me?

Single- or Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete, What's Right For Me?

At Chase Bays, we’ve been making manual brake conversions for many years. We’ve talked about why manual brakes are awesomewhy our solutions are ideal for motorsports and the like, so check out that content for a more in-depth look at the background on why we started creating these products!  

Here, we want to explain some key differences between our two core offerings, our Single- and Dual-Piston Brake Booster Deletes. These aren’t “version 1” and “version 2” of the same product, these are two different solutions to suit different use cases. Both share common ground in that they will result in consistent, improved pedal feel and feedback, but there are some key differences, and we want to help you select the right one for your build. 

We’ll start with our Single Piston Brake Booster Delete. This is a compact solution that has been on the market for many years and has been proven on thousands of builds, ranging from competition motorsports to street and show car builds. It’s an economical and ultra-compact solution. It’s sleek, it’s aesthetically pleasing, and it will bolt in just like a factory piece. You’ll immediately notice improved pedal feel and more consistent braking performance. 

 

Our single-piston solution is ultra-compact, more compact than our dual-piston solution. When combined with our brake line relocation, this will offer the cleanest possible look for your engine bay. This ultra-compact design is extremely economical and offers a very competitive price point. 

 For motorsports-oriented builds, our Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete takes things a step further in the direction of ultimate performance. For starters, we adjust the pedal ratio to 6:1, generally considered optimal for manual brake setups in top-tier racing series. This helps provide optimal pedal feel and pedal effort, allowing a driver to turn lap after lap, even in endurance racing settings, consistently. We have even taken this to the track to prove the part, time and again, drifting and racing. We've podiumed a few times along the way. 

 

 

Being a motorsport-oriented solution, we designed the Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete to be legal for any sanctioning body, whether FormulaDRIFT, SCCA, NASA, WRL or any others. This includes a true dual-circuit design with a dual-chamber reservoir to ensure that a failure at either end of the car won’t affect the other. 

Both of these products offer excellent bang for the buck and are proven on countless cars on the street and track. Still not sure which is best for your build? We’re happy to help! Email us at sales@chasebays.com with your build details and our team will be happy to help get you the optimal solution for your unique situation! 

November 01, 2023 by Chase Bays
How to Properly Delete ABS

How to Properly Delete ABS

By Bryan Leonard, VP, Chase Bays

Deleting ABS from any car can certainly prove to be a daunting task. The ABS works with individual wheel sensors to help detect and subsequently prevent wheel lock up. While this may be perfect for a daily driven normal street car, on cars being developed for performance driving, factory ABS can sometimes cause problems.  Motorsport grade ABS systems are great but generally start around $8,000 for parts alone. You can repurpose certain factory ABS systems to work as a stand alone system, but again, this can become costly.  

Deleting the ABS sometimes is as simple as pulling the unit and re-plumbing the system. However, many times removing the ABS can pose major issues to the car's electrical system causing “limp mode” outcomes. This is chassis-specific and the internet can be a useful friend here. 

The biggest question to ask is what are the implications of deleting my ABS? Who else with my chassis has completed this task and what issues did they face? For drifting this really allows left foot braking without ABS intervention. Keep in mind you would really need a manual brake of some sort to get the proper pedal feel. We offer an excellent solution in the Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete. This comes with our bias valve integrated, which is a critical part to fine-tune your non-ABS brake system. If you select another master cylinder solution, we would advise buying the bias valve to complete the setup. 

 

Research your platform, see if someone makes a delete kit electronically and hydraulically.  If not, ask professionals who are familiar with that platform what to do with the electronics. Next ensure that you have properly unioned the lines to their appropriate position. Trace where the front lines connect to the ABS and ensure that union is mated to the front line that leads to the master cylinder.  Same with the rear lines. You or a professional will need to be comfortable with flaring. If you aren't comfortable or don't trust your work, seek professional advice.  It is critical these items are flared properly. NEVER use a single flare on a braking system. Double flares are common on US cars and DIN on Euros. Japanese cars have a little of both. Identify what you have on your car for consistency.  

Chase Bays offers line solutions for popular chassis including BMW E30, E36 and E46, Nissan S13 and S14, Honda Civics and Integra, Miata and more. Using the E36 as an example, lines running from front to rear including front line relocations for both the OE master cylinder and our Brake Booster Eliminator, handbrake lines and even caliper lines to complete the setup. Our lines will adapt directly to the chassis, master cylinder and calipers for the most aesthetically pleasing, leak-free, easily installed solution. 

 

If an off-the-shelf solution isn't available or a custom solution is needed, building a hardline will most likely be the easiest method since soft lines require proper tooling to crimp. Use a proper line bender as well, some people will attempt to bend the lines by hand.  After spending so much time on properly laying out your hardlines, flaring, the last thing you want is to kink the line because you didn't want to use a proper bender. Make sure you flare and add the fitting before you bend a section if that end is short. The flaring tool takes a certain amount of space. If you bend too early, you may not be able to get the fitting on.  

Braking systems are super critical. You must be proficient at using these tools or seek a professional. Failure to do this, well, you know. Do your research before committing. Build a game plan, then execute.

Bryan Leonard has extensive experience as a professional race car builder, driver and driver coach in series including IMSA, World Challenge, WRL, Porsche Sprint Challenge, and SRO.

How to Build the Perfect Race Car

How to Build the Perfect Race Car

By Bryan Leonard, VP, Chase Bays

The quest to build the perfect road race car is a battle that privateers and manufacturers alike have tried to conquer. Asking the right questions on the front end of this battle, will save you time and resources. Here we will outline a good jump off point for building a race car.

We will list some of the key points then explain them in a bit more detail.  

  1. What is the cars intended use? 
  2. What is the budget?
  3. Create parts list/ fabrication list. Where is the budget best spent?
  4. Create an execution list in chronological order.
  5. Test, test, test, then test more.
  1. What is the car's intended use? Is it autocross, track days, road racing, spirited driving? Each form of driving listed here has much different requirements to perform at the max potential. There are a few things that I would argue are non-negotiable for each one of these forms. Braking systems and suspension. Autox, you would want to decide what class you wanted to run, and build the car to suit. Track days, you would just decide how far you want to take the car. For track days I would recommend brake system, suspension, heat management, and tires. Learn how to optimize what you have before adding power. Road race cars, same as autox, find the rules and build the car accordingly. I could write an entire book on building a road race car, however for the sake of this blog, I will try to set the building blocks.
  1. What is the budget? This is a mission critical item. Many times people find themselves unable to finish a project because they didn't set a proper budget at the onset. No matter what your income is, your sponsorship is, or however the project is being funded, you need to set a budget. You can do this over the whole project, you can do this on a monthly basis. There are many ways to do this, but the important part is that it is executed.  
  1. Create parts list/fabrication list. Where is the budget best spent?  Now that we know what we can spend per week, per month, or whatever time frame was set, we can place the money in the right places. Having a parts list is crucial to proper project execution. This will help determine where the money is best spent and in what timeframe it can be spent. Knowing this will help create a project execution plan.
  1. Create an execution list in chronological order. With everything you have documented it's now time to create an execution list. This will allow you to manage the project properly rather than simply deciding on what to work on in that moment. This will also allow you to see the workflow and help you move around the project and not lose time. The biggest mistake people make is ordering a bunch of parts without seeing how they work together. Then they begin to work on the car and are forced to make compromises just to get it finished. How many times have you heard (or said) “we just have to get it done” or “you won't even be able to see it?” Those are the words of the defeated.  
  1. Test, test, test, then test more. Find good baselines for all settings: brakes, suspension alignment, tuning etc. Then go test the car. The internet is a plethora of knowledge and misleading information (even if it's not malicious or intentional)  Do your own testing, and determine what feels best for you and your project. Examples of misleading information: “it worked on my friend's car,” “this is what I did and it worked perfectly” (says the guy who is super slow and on track once a year).  

I could write an entire book about building a proper race car, but I think the most important things that remain the same among all the disciplines we have listed are suspension and brakes. Consistent brakes create consistent drivers, heat management. Braking is the hardest task to master on a race track. Having good pads, good rotors and a manual brake are paramount to creating the perfect road race car. Pedal boxes and dual master setups are expensive and are not plug and play. Major modification and considerations must be made before going this route.  The Chase Bays DBBE is the easy button. Proper pedal ratio, proper consistency, that manual brake feel that is so important. 

Suspension is another overlooked item.  Solid bushings and proper dampers can make or break a build. I would always purchase the nicest dampers your budget will allow. People who state you don't need that kind of damper for x, y, z are simply wrong and don't understand how critical they are.

Heat management, from the engine to the power steering to the driver, all racing is heat management. Oil coolers and proper radiators will help protect the investment and also allow the car to operate at the designed temps. Power steering coolers keep the steering inputs consistent, there is nothing worse than being mid-corner and having a power steering issue.   

In closing, this is just a jump off point for building a road race car. There are many considerations to be made, far too much for a blog. We provide many solutions for road race cars that fix problems with brakes, engine oil/fluid cooling, power steering cooling etc. Make a plan and get your car built! 

Bryan Leonard has extensive experience as a professional race car builder, driver and driver coach in series including IMSA, World Challenge, WRL, Porsche Sprint Challenge, and SRO.

October 18, 2023 by Chase Bays
Knuckleup's Field Trip to Midpond!

Knuckleup's Field Trip to Midpond!

This past weekend we made the short drive 45 minutes south of Birmingham to attend Knuckleup.tx field trip to Midpond drift event, and to support all of our Texas guys who use Chase Bays parts. 

We wanted to write a short blog to give you guys a little insight to the event and share the pictures we got. 

The two day event was stacked with a lot of good drivers from Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama, as well as some really cool cars! I mean when have you ever seen a handful of SUPER NICE Toyota JZX's drifting in Alabama? probably never.  D-Realm was out on track slinging around their full interior big body sedans all weekend, and looking good doing it!

Summer time in Alabama is always full of on and off rain showers and what feels like 1,000% humidity, and of course it wouldn't have been a Midpond event if it didn't rain a little bit at some point during the day.  The rain made for some fun laps for the drivers, some cars getting stuck in the mud needing to be pulled out, some near misses of a few trees and some cool pictures of cars dropping a wheel off in a mud hole. 

All of the guys who use Chase Bays parts ripped all weekend. We are always stoked to see our parts being put to the test and getting real world feedback. Events like this give us a chance to meet our customers and be there for them in case of an issue with any of our parts. 

Huge Shoutout to Jimmy and the rest of the crew who helps him put on these events, all of our loyal customers and the spectators who come out to support us and events like this!

 Now, Lets meet the ABSOLUTE RIPPERS that use our products. 

Jimmy Yates SR20DET Powered Nissan R32 Sedan, Jimmy is using the following Chase Bays Products. 

Chase Bays Power Steering Kit - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 SR20DET or KA24DE | CORE MOUNT

Chase Bays Brake Line Relocation - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 - inBay OEMC

Chase Bays Clutch Line - RHD Nissan Silvia S13 / S14 / S15

Chase Bays Fuel Line Kit - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 with KA24DE | SR20DET

Chase Bays Compact Fuel Pressure Regulator

Jakob Young's Nissan Silvia is equipped with the following Chase Bays products. 

Chase Bays Power Steering Kit - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 SR20DET or KA24DE | CORE MOUNT

Chase Bays Steering Rack Hard Line Replacement - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14

Chase Bays Coolant Overflow

Dustin English's Toyota JZX 100 Chaser is equipped with the following Chase Bays Products. 

Chase Bays Coolant Overflow

 V2 Chase Bays Hydro Handbrake in pull up configuration   

 

Damon English's  Toyota JZX 100 is equipped with the following Chase Bays Parts. 

Chase Bays Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete with Bolt-On 6:1 Pedal Ratio

V3 Chase Bays Hydro Handbrake in pull up configuration

Chase Bays Triple Baffled Power Steering Reservoir

Nathan Taylor's 1JZ Nissan S13 Coupe is equipped with the following Chase Bays Products. 

Chase Bays Compact Upper Water Neck - Toyota 1JZ-GTE | 2JZ-GTE

Chase Bays Raised Inline Filler Neck

Chase Bays Clutch Line 

Chase Bays Brake Line Relocation - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 - inBay OEMC

Chase Bays Fenderwell Brake Lines - 89-98 Nissan S13 / S14 240sx

Chase Bays Power Steering Kit - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 with 1JZ-GTE or 2JZ-GTE

Chase Bays Tucked Aluminum Radiator - Nissan 240sx S13 / S14 / S15 and R32

 

 

For the full gallery of pictures from the event click the link below

Knuckleup.tx Field Trip to Midpond photos 

 

July 14, 2023 by landon mcfarland
Chase Bays goes to Drift Week!

Chase Bays goes to Drift Week!

Written by Christian Niezgoda ( @kaizokuchristian )

Drift Week has become a huge name and part of drifting in North America, but some folks are still learning what it is. Drift Week is a cross-state adventure where you street drive your drift car to multiple tracks and then drift those tracks. For Drift Week 7, there were nine track days. You are not allowed a trailer or support vehicle once the adventure has started. You are, however, allowed to trailer to the first track and home from the last track. We opted to street drive the entire trip. 

A group of friends and I built a 1997 BMW M3 for the trip in a matter of weeks. The build was full of parts I felt were necessary to make the car reliable enough to do nine track days and over 4000 miles of street driving. 

One of the most important things to having a reliable car is keeping all the fluids maintained and sealed up, such as engine oil, power steering fluid, brake fluid and coolant/water. While thinking of what this car would need to be ready for the trip, I immediately thought of Chase Bays. I knew I needed reliable and high-quality products to manage my fluids and make it through this trip. These products included:

• Chase Bays Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete
• Chase Bays Power Steering Kit with Cooler
• Chase Bays Raised Inline Filler Neck (to delete that pesky expansion tank)
• Chase Bays Clutch Line
• Chase Bays Handbrake
• Chase Bays Handbrake Brake Line Kit
• Chase Bays Coolant Overflow
• Chase Bays Windshield Washer Reservoir
• Chase Bays Engine Oil Cooler
• Chase Bays Oil Catch Can

All of these products were super straightforward to install, which was great given our timeline of three weeks to complete the car and hit the road.

Our Drift Week trip started in Boise, Idaho, with our first destination being Tucson, Arizona. After two successful days at Musselman Honda Circuit, we headed to Southern California. There, we had five total track days at three different tracks. The last leg took us to Tooele, Utah, for the final two track days at Utah Motorsports Campus. Then, it was time to return home. Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, you can prep a car as much as possible, but that is a lot of driving and track days piled up next to each other. As anticipated, my fluid systems were flawless, and the brakes were insanely consistent on the track and the thousands of miles spent street driving. I could hardly remember what the boosted setup felt like because I loved the manual brakes so much. The power steering system stayed cool and consistent while pushing the car to its limits. 

Thanks to the Chase Bays Oil Cooler, the engine oil temperature was easily managed throughout the trip. Removing that troublesome BMW expansion tank was helpful. We remedied this by using the Chase Bays Upper Water Neck and welding it to the thermostat housing. Then we installed the overflow tank for the venting side of the system. We still were struck with a challenge as the 225k mile head gasket decided it had finally had enough. The compression ring between cylinders 5 and 6 had failed and caused a misfire. 

This is where another aspect of Drift Week came into play—community. We were in an Airbnb with some great folks, including Kevin and Ryan from Canada. We hardly knew them before the trip, but this adventure was not only track days and drifting but meeting new friends and building awesome relationships with those people through drifting! We hitched a ride with them and gathered all the parts to perform a head gasket repair in the garage of our Victorville Airbnb. We saw some amazing places such as Pelican Parts, Hoonigan, and Moon Eyes. Ultimately, we fixed the car. We missed a few track days due to it, but we were back at it before long.

Another thing that helped this repair be so much simpler was the simplicity of the Chase Bays parts we had installed. The Motorsport Dual Piston Manual Brake made pulling the intake manifold a breeze since the brake booster was no longer there. The cooling system was nice and simple since the expansion tank was now gone. So many aspects of the engine bay had been simplified thanks to the Chase Bays products, which made working in the bay much easier.

Once we completed the Southern California tracks, we headed up north to Utah. There, we hit a bunch of snow on the final track days. The brakes shined here as they worked just as well in the frigid cold as in the warmer southern weather (we missed the California snow track day). I could control the car consistently with left foot braking thanks to the easy-to-manage manual brakes provided by the DBBE. I could throw big entries in the wet and use the foot brake to slow the car without just locking up the brakes or jabbing them as inconsistently as you can with a vacuum-assisted brake setup.

In conclusion, we built an amazing car that was an absolute joy to drive, even with some really old high-mile bones. The parts from Chase Bays helped keep the car cool and consistent throughout the entire 4000+ road miles and 7 track days. Not a bad way to spend a week, if I do say so myself.

Top 5 Chasebays products for Road Racing

Top 5 Chasebays products for Road Racing

1. Dual Piston Brake Booster Delete

There are many reasons why this is a must.  Just looking through our blogs and social media will explain in depth why this is a must for anyone that wants to be on track.  The key points are; consistent brake feel, which leads to predictable brake conduct, which allows you to experiment with braking zones and find the sweet spot sooner. 

 
2. Caliper Brake Lines
This is also a great addition to any vehicle in a high-performance environment.  The factory lines can actually swell during high brake pressure.  This will cause fatigue over time and can actually crack.  The swelling also will cause issues with optimal braking since you have increased the volume in the line, and you could get a longer pedal reducing driver confidence.  When this happens, generally driver will “grab more pedal”, they will release and re-grab hurting the braking zone significantly. 
3. Tucked Radiator/Fans
Racing is all about temperature management.  Everything runs hot, including the driver, so having a larger radiator with proper fans will ensure you keep the heart of the vehicle healthy.  The Chase Bays dual-pass radiator allows the coolant to make two passes through the rad giving it more time in the airstream.  This along with increased volume over stock will take care of your cooling needs.  Factory plastic end tanks are also prone to cracking due to multiple heat cycles.  A great way to ruin a track weekend, is to crack a plastic end tank or overheat your engine.4. Oil Cooler/ Thermostatic Oil Sandwich Plate
We want to also keep the blood of the vehicle cooled off.  The oil cooler is certainly the way to go.  This will also increase your oil capacity.  During morning engine warmups, the coolers could possibly cause an extended warmup.  With the Chasebays thermostatic plate, this will eliminate that and allow the car to warm up quickly before allowing the cooler to function at 100%.

 

                 

5. Power Steering Kit with Cooler

Power steering is a great thing.  It certainly cuts down on driver fatigue allowing you to function longer.  However, many times power steering fluid will boil due to how much we demand of it.  Chasebays has power steering kits that correct this.  The coolers are sleek and don’t require much room.  Just like engine oil, power steering fluid needs to be thermally maintained.

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April 04, 2023 by Chase Bays