The latest Supercars series will sport the best filtration systems in racing thanks to the competition’s partnership with industry-leading RYCO.
Behind the fanfare, adrenaline and excitement the Supercars brings, there are tonnes of moving pieces. While the casual viewer is regularly overwhelmed by big brand names and logos, Supercars’ official filtration partner RYCO will be playing a particularly critical role in the competition’s future. Supercars has unveiled its new GEN3 series for 2023, which will hearken back to motorsport’s touring roots by using cars similar to their everyday, commercial counterparts.
Muscle cars such as the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang will need to not only go faster, but longer maintenance intervals will mean they’ll also need to go farther.
RYCO TO THE RESCUE
GEN3 race cars will need the best when it comes to oil, air and fuel filters, and major partner RYCO has them all good to go. RYCO has been working with the teams in the pits, the Supercars analytics gurus as well as the engine builders to get an understanding of the shortcomings of current filtration products, as well as the limitations they create for the cars.
Before and during that process, RYCO had already been conducting its own research on testing engines to their limits with certain particulate sizes and incumbent filtration products.
RYCO’s Melbourne-based team of experts designed their own filters for fuel, oil and air filters specially built to maximise filtration efficiencies and engine life while providing peak competitiveness for super cars. Their developments have been backed up by a bevy of global collaborators who assisted in identifying the latest technology filter medias which could deliver and meet the requirements for a Supercar-standard vehicle.
RYCO’s mission statement is ‘to create the world’s best oil, air and fuel filters for racing vehicles’ and with such a rigorous and thorough design and testing process, you be hard-pressed to find any failings.
RYCO’S SPECIAL FILTRATION SOLUTIONS
If they’re good enough for Supercars, they’re good enough for your vehicles. RYCO’s selection of fuel, oil and air filters have proven they can take both the Mustang and Camaro to the heights they’ll demand in GEN3 after extensive testing in racing conditions and at RYCO’s lab. With all doubt or concern dealt with, Supercars teams and officials were quick to praise the reliability of RYCO filters and make the switch from conventional racing filters.
“The RYCO ‘control’ oil, fuel and air filters provide long-life performance for GEN3 engines,” Supercars Engine Projects Manager Craig Hastad said. Supercars’ experienced Head of Motorsport, Adrian Burgess said: “RYCO’s innovative, world-first filtration technology will enable the Gen3 series the best chance of ensuring engine mileage and as a result will significantly improve sustained race performance for teams”.
A FINE ART
When it comes to extending the life of an engine with filters – the finer the better. RYCO general manager of engineering and innovation Alastair Hampton said engine testing so far with the three filters had yielded amazing results. “I was at KRE Race Engines the other day and they’d been testing the Camaro engine in the (United) States where it ran six simulated Bathursts in a row. It had zero power loss,” he said. “The philosophy’s working and it’s really pleasing to see our hypotheses we had at the start of the project playing out in real life.”
FUEL FILTERS
Unlike other fuel filters that use course particle pleated metal screens, RYCO’s fuel filters use a rolled element fine-micron media. Alastair said the design for the fuel filter needed to strike a balance of having finer particle filtration than an everyday engine, whilst allowing for maximum fuel flow and strength. “A typical fuel filter would be in the range of 15-18 micron. We targeted below 8 micron, that’s because we wanted to extend the life of these sensitive fuel components,” he said.
“The rolled element gives us a lot more media area, which means we can achieve that brief of overall high filtration with high flow and a strong element that can withstand that high demand the vehicle will have for it.”
OIL FILTERS
Sporting a 100% synthetic media for fine-micron filtration as opposed to your usual cellulose-based system. “We wanted to keep the oil as clean as possible knowing there’s always going to be some fine particles coming in from potentially the air filter and going in through the blow-by,” Alastair said.
“With the oil filter, there wasn’t really a limit to how fine we wanted to go. What we did was find the best media there is available today.
“That’s the full synthetic media that can achieve about a 20 micron nominal filtration efficiency. The big benefit of synthetic media filtration is it’s still very efficient at 5 microns.
“The design philosophy was having that fine mircon filtration without the expense of flow … that’s what drove the design of that SynTec oil filter.”
Specs:
• MICRON RATING: 20 micron (nominal)
• EFFICIENCY RATING: 99.67% 20μm
• FUEL COMPATIBILITY: E85, Methanol, Alcohol
• SERVICE INTERVAL: 15,000 kms
• SYNTEC APPLICATIONS: Premium Upgrade over OE, High Performance and Racing
AIR FILTERS
Setting itself apart with its honeycomb construction, RYCO’s air filter has a hydrophobic nano-fibre coated media. “These Supercar engines are consuming between 20,000-30,000L of air per minute.
If the air is contaminated, that adds up really fast and that can do significant damage to expensive racing engines,” Alastair said.
“We wanted to turn the design for traditional performance filters on its head. We wanted to create a filter that was much finer than a typical passenger car filter, to do that we had to look at the finest particle medias available in 2022.
“We wanted to package as much media into a certain space so we could use a fine micron nano-fibre media. We elected to go for a honeycomb construction … this filter is filtering down to about 5 micron which makes it the finest filter on the GEN3 Supercar.”
For RYCO’s Executive General Manager Stuart Chandler, the partnership was a was a sign of future growth between the company and Supercars.
“I am extremely excited by our new partnership with Supercars as the ‘official filtration partner’ of the category through being the ‘control’ supplier of oil, air and fuel filters,” he said. “In addition, this partnership cements RYCO Filters as the premium motorsport filter brand in Australia and New Zealand. “The accomplishment would not have been possible without RYCO’s brand promise of adapting to demanding conditions, along with our unwavering commitment
to innovation. I thank everyone involved in helping us achieve this success.”
ABOUT GEN3
While fielding a team and cars in the Repco Supercars Championship sees competitors showcasing the most advanced cars in the field, it comes at a cost.
Teams are often billed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in repairs and regular maintenance. GEN3 aims to balance the high-octane competitiveness Supercars is known for with increased longevity and performance on vehicles which are more suited to racing on civilian roads.
The series takes somewhat of a side-step back to touring car competition roots that had everyday sport cars supped up for racetrack usage.