But when power house partner Nissan left, the engine used in the open Deltawing wasn’t as competitive as hoped and thus an all new engine had to be developed from scratch by DeltaWing Racing Cars team and Elan Motorsports. The new turbocharged engine had an in-house block and crankcase machined from billet and was topped off by a Mazda MZR cylinder head featuring direct injection fuel system. With a dry sump designed by Dailey Engineering in America.
The engine Nissan chose was a 1.6-liter, 300-horspower inline 4. At the time, Nissan claimed it was a heavily revised version of the Nissan Juke, although several members of the DeltaWing team contend that it was an RML engine design originally meant for a Chevrolet touring car.
Early test runs of the DWC13 were rumoured to have been conducted using the 1.6 litre WTCC engine developed by RML but the proper Deltawing engine was a fully bespoke unit developed entirely by RML in England. Indeed it featured some significant design details which could never be legal in any big international racing series.
When Nissan parted company with the Deltawing, the project left the Aston Martin Chassis without any power, so Elan Technologies in Braselton in America developed its own 1.9 litre design for the car. Early on the engine was a bit of a mixed bag of existing OEM parts which had been modified and bespoke components but as the engine developed some top level racing technology was required.
Indeed the transition between the 2012 and 2013 seasons brought significant change to the whole DeltaWing project and an all new car called the Deltawing DWC13.
Behind the engine, the DWC13 runs a Borg Warner turbocharger with re-designed turbo Wastegate and blow-off valves. The engine might be fairly small, but the turbo does pack a punch. The car has over 350bhp and has exceed 200mph plus on the banking at Daytona Motor Speedway. This was one of the bespoke factors which gave the car a lot of pace.
An interesting idea on the car is the manifold on the side of the engine. Not only is it mounted low, it is 3D printed. Engineers at DeltaWing Racing worked with CRP and Windform to create a fully functional exhaust manifold. The new intake manifold designed and developed by DeltaWing Racing utilizes manufacturing techniques with Windform for its construction to operate under boost in race conditions. The resulting component has been campaigned by the team since March 2013, gaining positive results and showing the tremendous potential for utilising advanced materials technologies in partnership with 3D Printing.
Prior to the production of the intake manifold, Windform was used on the DeltaWing to produce several other different components, which conclude electronic casing, and transmission seal covers with integrated, pressurised oil feed passages also built from Windform.
Over the past two years, the 3D Printed manifolds have covered over 12,000 testing hours and racing miles, along with 6 hours per unit running on the dyno back home in America.
During the redesign of the intake manifold, a high performance material was required to handle the heat and tension placed on the part. CRP USA introduced Windform SP to the DeltaWing engineering team for consideration. Windform SP is a composite polyamide based carbon-filled material.