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)

[Dave_Darling]

My solution is two-fold:

1--tuna can
2--drive slowly

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

--DD

[JPB]

Tuna can doable, driving slow, easier said than done. Hows about going fats to the point of breaking loose and holding the clutch open around a turn (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif)

[Dave_Darling]

I dunno about that, but I just have lousy times... I do use hard-compound tires, which does tend to cut down on the lateral G's I can impose on the oil.

You can do other things to help keep the oil going to the Right Places: A full-on deep sump is one, modifying the windage tray (cut it in long U shapes and fold those up and/or down so they form "fences" running fore and aft) is another. I have also seen modified tuna cans and valve covers where a line was run from the bottom of the valve cover into the side of the tuna can. Accusump is another good option, and of course with enough effort you can put together a dry-sump system like the 911 engines have.

Myself, I'm slow enough that just the tuna can and running 1/2 quart over full keeps the oil light off.

--DD

[grantsfo]

Think it depends on what your doing with the car. If your driving on the street and at AX I think you can get away with tuna can and some good oil.

If youre going to the track for long fast sessions on sticky tires I dont think you can throw enough money at a T4 to make sure everything is getting oiled.

[Joe Ricard]

Dry sump

[JPB]

Good advise bros/manziers. The PO had a 1 1/2 quart sump under the engine but took it off for street use since the Beater is low to start with. Me likes dry sump though, thats easy enough to rig up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)

[TGM]

A full deep sump was the only solution to completely solve my oil problems. I have 2 qt. accusump and it would keep pressure in turns but then on occasion, oil pressure would drop almost to zero for 5-10 seconds as the pump lost priming and the accumulator refilled.

However, my first day out with deep sump, it was destroyed by crankshaft pulley that came off a car in front of us. I will install new one but need to weld some type of shield to the engine cross bar. If I had to do all over, I would go dry sump.

[Krieger]

I have a simple solution that has worked well in my car for autocrossing with street and khumo victoracers... overfill the sump by about half a quart. When my motor is cold the oil level is 5-6 mm over the top line of the dipstick. I have never had a problem.

[Joe Ricard]

Every 914 I have driven other than mine has been a wallowing pig. Get the car sprung to keep it flat. R3S05 Hoosiers or slicks and 300 pound rear springs 21mm t-bars and a 22mm sway bar.

[sww914]

I've gotten by with a deep sump and a 2 qt accusump. Before the accusump but after sticky tires and stiff springs I'd come out of long corners with no oil pressure for 5-10 seconds. It turned my rod bearings into something that looked like a pile of mashed up pennies.
I think that a dry sump is superior to my setup, but more expensive.

[Chris Pincetich]

Ok - I'm hoping for input here for my particular application. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)
No doubt oiling of the engine bearings is a problem on the track, and this winter I want to build up to get there, but here's the million dollar question:

How much worse are 2.0 bearings and internals than those from a 1.7 or 1.8?

What about Chevy size bearings on a 2.0 crank?

Are oiling worries on a 1.7 less than a 2.0 (assuming I go just as fast?)?

Randal B's GGR AX 222 car has a oil pickup welded into the side of a standard looking Welt tuna can that goes to a dry sump. Pretty trick. Club has pics. Too expensive.

[HAM Inc]

Assuming you already have an adequate oil cooler plumbed up adding a dry sump may not cost as much as you think. A dry sump oil pump is available that fits in the stock location (alternate engine mounting bracket must be made. I have done this on the house F-Prod car for solid mounts) Used oil tanks can be had on e-bay for cheap. If the car is a dd that is occasionally ax, then an accusump is the way to go. If a dedicated track and/or ax car, I would go dry sump. It can be done for less than $500.00

[hedfurst]

Len,
I have a deep sump that has fixed my problems for autox where the cornering forces are intense but rather short. I am now considering track events and am interested in a dry sump system. Is this system you are refering to compatable with the stock cooling?
Joe, wallowing pigs they may be but I believe that this is an issue of centrifugal forces and not really directly related to suspension issues. Whether it "wallows" or is "flat" in the corners the oil is still going to move away from the pickup and the sump's not going to refill well. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong. "Tighter" suspension would however allow you to generate more gs and therefore more centrifugal force.

[Joe Ricard]

Who knows how to wire up a sensor/sendor to activate a huge idiot light that I can mount on the binnicale or next to my shift light.
At what pressure points and RPM would the parameters be.

I have watched my oil pressure gage while my co-driver tried to make me puke on the track. even through a huge 70 MPH sweeper screeming through in 3rd gear pulling 1.4G Full race slicks I did not see the gage drop. Temps of the oil were near 260. Just a tuna can.

[hedfurst]

Hmm.
"Huge," =not really quantifiable, how many seconds?
At how many rpms? 70 mph in 5th?
1.4 is really good Joe, says alot for your suspension set up but at some point you WILL suck the sump empty and lose pressure--dude, it's a matter of physics and time- specifically, the duration of the sweeper.
And then, a motor turning 7000 is going to potentially empty the sump 40% faster than same set up at 5000.
You can stretch 'em but you can't suspend the laws of physics--at least not in this universe.

[alpha434]

Well...

There is a port in 356 cases that all the oil has to flow through. It's a small threaded part with a hole put through the center. The first thing most racers do is take that piece out- because it restricts oil flow.

Now it's time for a history lesson. Ford V-8s. Top oilers vrs side oilers. One prioritized the crank, the other the cam. I don't remember which was which. The side oiler oiled the crank first?

Anyway. The cam needs the oil MUCH more than the crank does. We take that little part and braze it shut, drill a much smaller hole in it, and put it back in. The cam sits in a pool of oil as long as you don't have the pump sucking the bath away. The crank will live a much longer life without oil. It has 6 times the contact area in the bearings and only spins 1/4 as fast.

What does this amount to? Well. 356s have 2 basic types of sump plates. The tuna can, and the monster big plates that hold an extra 5 qts or something ridiculous. Having either of them on there is a big risk (if you hit a bump, it'll tear the case open.) Plus they're heavy. And oil is heavy. We don't run any sump plate. AND we rev our engines to 8500.

Hope I helped...!

[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)

[zig-n-zag]

JPB, The December 07 issue of Hot VWs has an article about Keeping Bearings Alive in a Type 1 drag motor. Interesting. With the use of a dry sump pump and the smaller diameter crank pulley, I wonder if a larger (?) alternator pulley could be made up to bring the fan speed back to normal for the Type 4?

[HAM Inc]

The CB dry sump pump is compatible with pretty much any existing oil cooler, stock or otherwise, that has already been installed. It's not the ideal dry sump pump, but it works. It draws the oil out of the engine through the factory pickup and circulates it out to a holding tank. The pump then draws the oil back from the holding tank and passes it to the primary gears which then send the oil into the engine as a conventional pump would.

If you have full flowed your case already and have a remote OC plumbed up you wouldn't have to do anything different with it. As a matter of fact I now believe this is the best routing with this pump as cooling the oil after it has passed through the pump should lead to cooler oil. On our F-Prod car we routed the oil through a cooler and filter and then returned it to the tank. In this scenario the cooled oil passes back through the pump which is likely hotter than the oil. I wouyld add a filter between the tank and the out let line from the pump. It will keep the tank from collecting particles of wear.

A conventional upright holding tank would be a challenge to mount in a car with a funtioning passenger seat. Fortunately holding tanks are easy to build and could even be mounted in the rear trunk. A search of dry sump tanks on e-bay almost always reveals custom units for sale that might be easier to mount in a tighter space. Make sure you have some method of preventing the holding tank from draining into the engine when you shut it off. We use a manual ball valve. It works fine for us because our team is good about check list and it always gets opened before the engine is started. If you don't have some method of preventing drain back the engine will fill with oil and the pistons will pump it out your vents into your breather tank on the next start-up.