Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Oil starvation - Barry Mumms answers

At a suggestion I emailed yet another racer about the oil starvation. Answers similar to the Reinke, Mirko, Bondurant responses.

Barry,
> My name is Dan Nixon and myself and several other from the CEG are
> trying to figure out the reason that several persons have had "spun"
> bearings from what may be oil starvation . Some cases have
> been related
> to hard right turns (offramp, track events), some high RPMs, but
> occasionally no apparent stress. Most of these episodes
> (probably 15-20
> have been described are on the street and often low mileage (say 40K
> miles) without admitted low oil levels or lack of maintainence.
>
> Some have suggested the oil pan needs baffles, or that it needs
> screens to breakup aeration or windage tray changes. I saw that you
> group developed a windowed pan which I was hoping might have shed some
> light (literally) on the problem. Have you had any oil related issues
> or learned the cause(s)? If so, any solutions - redesigned pan,
> accusump etc. We are talking street use here in my case, I
> may do some
> SoloII but that's it. I've personally had no problems with my Contour
> SVT but would like to keep it that way. Any help greatly
> appreciated.

OK, on the oil thing ... we knew, from other forms of racing, that at
certain tracks, e.g. Road Atlanta, we WOULD have oiling problems. The oil
(on any stock, wet sump engine), will "stand up" the side of the pan and
block under certain conditions, exposing the oil pickup, and temporarily
starving the engine of oil. Not a good thing. In addition, when that oil
"stands up", it will most likely hit the crankshaft, causing windage and
power drops.

SO, we baffled the pan right out of the chute....building a more extensive
windage tray, putting in some baffling (no spring loaded trap doors) AND
deepening the sump (we "squared" the pan off near the xalxe bellhousing).

In addition, we run a 3 quart accusump. Even with all the pan mods, we
still saw some oil pressure fluctuation until we used the accusump.

So, for the street, I'd recommend a stock pan with the accusump. The
accusump will handle the situations you'd likely encounter (or in
Solo)....and it's a LOT less $ than a modified pan.

>
> Just out of curiosity, how much power are you squeezing out of the
> Duratec (if I can ask).
We're making greater than 120hp/liter

FYI, 120HP/L is 300HP from the N/A 2.5L!

300 hp???

GIMMEE

ahhh.... Excuse my puddle of drool... That embarrasses a lot of forced induction cars!!!

Accusump they say... Anyone find a good place to mount it? (sans battery relocation)

I'm thinking the accusump needs to go where the Cabin-air filter is. I think there is enough room in there and I dunno about you. But I can manage to breathe without that piece.

It would be nice to have their cam grinders phone number!!!!

I was all hot to buy an accusump a month ago and then decided that I would tempt fate once more at the track without it, but this time with an oil gauge an warning buzzer to alert me to drops in oil pressure below a preset level - I'll let you know how it goes.

As for mounting location, I built a cardboard model of the 12" long accusump (4.5" diameter IIRC, but going from memory here) and found that there was enough room to mount it right below the battery. Not the easiest place to get to to put the air charge in, but hopefully that's something you do once per year. It was going to be tight and looked like in the worst case it may take a file to remove <0.5 mm from the bracket that holds the battery. What was going to take a bit of effort, regardless where you put it, was to figure out how to physically mount the thing - probably going to involve drilling some holes somewhere.

By the way, Canton had a price that was just marginally better than BAT, but not by a significant amount.

Eric

Waaaaaa....

NoFordsAgain quit cross posting... you have posted this in more than one section congrats you know how to type and copy and paste it to different post...

he he
and your following him around too!

Is that 120hp/l on a purpose built race engine?
Even so, drop some hints as gow to get there with n/a.

Mike