Oiling problems on sharp turns, Whats your oiling solution? Options

[JPB]

Talking to some track dudes some have said they gave up driving T4s due to loosing to much oil on the track and no matter how big the Acusump was, they still burned out bearings. What is your solution to this problem? THNX (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)

[Twystd1]

Joe,

I have some more useless data for you.

Back in my round "D" round days. We always had a BIG RED oil pressure light mounted on the top of the dash. As we had no time to look at a tach or any other gauges.
As we were usually door to door and our fellow drivers are pushing on our cars through the turns. Only when we were free of traffic for a second or two. Could we glance at the gauges.

The problem we encountered with the RED light was this.

A pressure switch Is just that. At a given pressure the switch stays open. Any pressure below that the switch closes and completes the circuit and the red light comes on.

In our case. That was typically at the end of a turn or when the engine was so hot the oil was like water. And the viscosity dropped like a hammer and we loose oil pressure.

The problem is that when the RED light (20 psi) went red. The engine had already hurt itself. Same with oil pressure gauges. They work even slower.

The only good thing about a pressure gauge or a low pressure red light was the driver had a sense of what was going on. Just not in real time.

Thats the caveat. NOT IN REAL TIME.

In essence. Damage may well have already occurred before the gauge/light has shown there is an issue. And as that issue repeats itself.
Something eventually breaks.

In the case of our V8s. Major oil pressure drops can happen and the pressure switch and the gauge will NEVER SEE IT. It happens too fast for the analog approach to get the info. And then the pressure will dam near instantly rise and get back to normal. This is often because 2 different issues.
1) Loss of oil to the pump.
2) Engine harmonics reacting on the oil pump which in turn makes the oil go into stasis. Thats right........ The gears are turning. Yet the pump ain't pumping.
It was only because of the generosity of an engineer that had REAL TIME pressure sensors and the ability to data log this did we find out this was true.

And since our class didn't allow dry sump oiling. Over the years. We figured out how to stop the oil pressure problesms. This is 18 year old data. Maybe some of this might help.

Below is a list of the things we did to mitigate oil pressure loss.

1) Crank scraper to keep oil in the pan. (Not applicable to our engines)
2) Blue printed Billet oil pump.
3) Custom windage trays with hinged areas to keep oil in the lowest part of the sump.
4) Oil pickup tube that was custom length and larger that stock.
5) Rifle drilled and/or honed ALL oiling passages in block. Also made soft radius's in ALL oil passages and lifter galleys wherever possible.
6) Kept as much oil out of the valve cover area that is humanly possible. We used spray bars for this. Also had restrictors in the push rods.
7) NEVER have more than 10 LBS per 1000 rpm. The rest is just a waste with our builds. Additional pressure just heats up the oil and wastes HP.
8) Bigger oil pans do NOTHING unless the pan configuration allows the oil to QUICKLY get back to the pickup point and pool at this low point.
9) Crank case breathing plays a part in oil control. High internal crank case pressure will aerate the liquid oil. As oil pumps don't work that well when trying to push a vapor and liquid at the same time. The bearings don't much like it either.
10) ONLY USE A RACE ENGINE, PURPOSE BUILT, OIL FILTER ON A RACE CAR....!!!!
Use full flow filtration with an oil filter that has NO internal bypass.
(Yes they make them)
The remote filter housing DOES have a bypass if the filter clogs or implodes.

If dry sump is an option for your class.
And it is a purpose built track car.
I think a fella would have to be nuts not to use it.

I hope there is something you might use in the above data.

Cheers,
Clayton
8)