Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Autocross and Open Track Oil Starvation

Our Duratec powered brothers seem to have a bit of a problem with oil starvation while doing extreme/high speed turns. Have any of you AutoXers out there had problems yet? I have over 50k on mine and I'm still on warrenty (25k left to go), but im starting to get worried about what will happen after the warrenty expires...

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David Z.
Silver E1 #4808 w/stuff
http://daplace.spedia.net

Hey Dave,

i didn't get the extended warranty and have long since exceeded the 36K mile mark. One little thing you can do to help avoid oil starvation is to add an extra 1/2 quart of oil. Now i know some people will say that this can cause some parasitic drag on the engine, but i haven't noticed any downside. And with the extra oil, i feel more comfortable that chances of oil starvation are pretty small.

Have you decided if you'll be attending the next Open-track event at Buttonwillow Raceway (Sunday 8/27)?

I'm still not sure If I'm going to go, If I do it probably wont be in my 'tour. My car is getting a tune up *cough cough*...

BTW, accoring to some info I have read, our engines have a windage try, so I don't think havning an extra .5 quart shouldn't affect it much...

The only way I know to prevent problems of this nature if you are going to do a lot of competive driving involves either of 2 things. The most expensive is to find a suitable dry sump lubrication system c/ whigher volume of lubricant so that oil starvation is not an issue. The other is to see if it is worthwhile putting in extra baffles in the sump area of the oil pan to limit the amount of oil movement laterally while under hard cornering. Some consultation with an automotive mechanical engineer would be worth it. Warranty would not likely be honored by Ford if you racing endeavours were exposed.

On some cars, overfilling the oil sump can actually exacerbate oil starvation problems. The crank starts whipping up the oil actually causing it to foam. This stuff then gets physically driven up into the motor and takes longer to drain back.

Make sure you really have an oil starvation problem before you try any fixes. Put a godd, direct acting oil pressure guage as close to the outlet side of the pump as possible. Then run some tests on a skid pad.



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John Coffey
johncof@veriomail.com