Cost aside - dry sump or Accusump

I think someone needs to get back to building his Midlana

Just kidding - I know all about life getting in the way.

Dry sump typically uses 2 to 3 times the oil volume... oil stays cleaner, cooler. Building (or not building) a belt guard is a poor reason not to use a dry sump if you can afford it.

The dry sump pan typically is expensive... BUT my experience is with Atlantic engines... where the engine/pan is a load bearing member of the chassis You might be able to make something suitable, cheaper

Regarding the Ebay comment, yes I was all over that, but then...

I need a dry sump pan for a Honda K20 - they virutally never show up on ebay. Like the pan, there's no chance of finding a pump mount for my non-circle track application. Then there's the pump and the concern about how much crap went through the gears; pictures only do so much. Then there's the tank... about the only part of it I'm likely to find on ebay that I can use, no doubt dirty. Then there's the detail that nearly all are NASCAR stuff and at or greater than 3 gallons. So while I keep an eye out on ebay I don't expect to see much for my application.

I'm cheap but I'd never use someone else's used tank.

I have built a number of dry sump pans. It's not that hard if you start with the flange from a stock pan. You just need to make a shallow valley with a scraper and a collection trough to scavenge from. As was mentioned, a guard to protect the belt if it needs it. The plumbing is not difficult and I made a tank from a fire extinguisher bottle.

I've thought about building my own - the surprising lack of responsiveness from vendors may well drive me to do just that, and the key component is indeed the pan. I could mod an OEM pan but am concerned that TIG welding to a casting with embedded oil residue might be tough. I could solve half the problem by buying a new OEM pan, and solve the other half by going with a steel pan, as unsexy as that is. Hmm, we'll see.

Yeah, I was assuming after building a whole car you can handle welding up a decent dry sump pan.

It comes down to time, but yes, this is starting to look more like a challenging and fun side project. The only tricky part is determining crank swing so a crank scraper can be made. The idea was to keep driving the car while this was in development, but it's looking like the pan will have to come off for measurements.

The Accusump was never supposed to be a direct competitor of a dry sump system. There is a reason that the fastest unrestricted cars in the world run dry sump systems.

The Accusump however, is the best bang for your buck oiling system available. An Accusump set up and a properly designed oil pan will cost you around $1,000 and will ensure oiling in MOST situations. If you have the means to go dry sump then we always suggest going that route.

The only real downfalls to dry sump in a race car are cost, complexity and packaging. The cost of a dry sump can be prohibitive to someone that may be only tracking their car a few times a year or may be building a track car on a budget. They can also be somewhat complex to put together and packaging it correctly in a car that isn't a plug and play application can be difficult without fabrication abilities. One other thing to keep in mind is that if the car is daily driven you may have a tough time getting the engine up to temp due to the high capacity of oil. (This is a strength in a race application).

While the pre-oiling benefit is nice it really only comes into play when the car sits for longer periods. Many street cars go 250k miles or more because they are started almost every day and the oil never completely drains into the pan. Dry starts are only an issue IMHO when the car sits for more than 2 weeks at a time. In these cases you really aren't starting the car more than a handful of times a year anyway.

The Accusump is a great addition to a car and will take car of most of your issues. However, a Dry Sump offers a few a few things that the Accusump doesn't. Such as better deaeration, increased oil capacity which increases the operating life of the oil and can keep the engine cooler and obviously it provides constant oiling unless you have catastrophic failure of one of the components. You can also shift the weight around for better weight distribution as well as lowering the engine because a dry sump pan is a lot shallower than a typical wet sump. With the right fabrication abilities Dry Sumps can be extremely advantages when packaged correctly.

I've linked something below as some food for thought. The Accusump is an alright option when looking at it's performance vs dry sump but really only becomes a reasonable option when cost is considered. Below is some date from a few years ago. While old it is still relevant as the Accusump hasn't changed.

http://gt4motorsport.com/2010/06/30/accusump-in-action/

I have an accusump in my Porsch and it works very well up until recently as I think something has go a-muck internally. I have to take it apart and see. (after 15 years of service)

Anyway back to why I am posting I look at the accusump as a back up to you primary oiling system. So if you have a dry sump and you toss a belt the accusump will give you a couple more seconds to get the motor shut down with out damage. My accusump solved the dreaded #2 rod bearing issue that my car has (and cost 2 motors before finally getting the accusump) But it also is there in case I loose a pump or something it gives me that little bit more time to save the motor from catastrophic failure.

Knurled wrote:

kb58 wrote: Thanks for replying, Keith. Being a FWD setup I can't really benefit from lowering the drivetrain since the transaxle bellhousing hangs down just as low as the stock pan. Also, half shaft angularity doesn't allow much of a drop even if the bellhousing was trimmed.

You're not thinking innovatively enough. Look at the Mazda V6 touring cars where the engine was so low that the right axleshaft went through the engine's V.

Back from the dead because I found the picture while looking for something else, and I did a double-take.

Yes, yes, the axle is going through the V. And they have that engine crammed down and back to the point where the crankshaft is by the firewall.

Wait a minute. This is a Mazda K engine, a destroked KLDE. Where is the cam drive?

FAR OUT! The rules say the engine has to be on the same axis relative to the chassis, they don't say anything about turning it around backwards so the trans is driven off of the nose.

Knurled wrote: I'm cheap but I'd never use someone else's used tank.

Why not? Any dry sump tank I've used came completely apart so you could clean it after a failure. The lid was bolted onto a flange. Remove that and all the baffles lift out and everything gets a good scrubbing and you are back in business.

I was obsessively looking over solutions in getting a decent amount of engine setback on my current project car, a '90 5.0 Mustang, and naturally Google led me here. The car is not going to be a real racer by any means (HPDE type events) and 95% of its life will be spent on the street.

Since the shape of a rear-sump Ford pan has that pesky protrusion for the oil pump, I thought the ideal solution for steering rack clearance would be this pan from Aviaid:

From Aviaid's site:

Aviaid said: SBF - 289/302, rear sump w/ external pickup and flat front sump, 79 & up mustang conversions w/ custom front crossmembers, or any SBFW installation requiring a rear sump pan for front crossmember clearance. Includes custom -12 external pickup connection. Fits most short and long tube headers. 4 door diamond trap assembly, slosh tray and scraper.

I could use an external pump where the smog pump used to be, kind of like this:

How completely crazy is this for the street in terms of reliability? I'm not concerned that it will cost more at this point, nor that it may be overkill for a weekend car, only that the belt system is reliable for street duty. I was even thinking of fabricating a shroud arrangement of some sort to protect the belt system, and of course a good oil gauge and warning/idiot light on the dash.

Any thoughts? Please note this is a situation of doing something purely because I want to and because the build is more fun if I give myself a few challenges.

Wally wrote: I can count on one hand the number of lost belts I've seen. If its really a concern once you mount the pump you can make a cover for it like some dirt track cars do. Pre oiling is not impossible either. On the stock car we took the belt off the crank, slipped it over the chuck of a 1/2" drill and spun the pump until we had pressure.

How often do the belts get changed? Is there any way of predicting a mileage interval?

A shroud would be a good idea, but even without one, the risk is about the same as running an exposed timing belt like all the riceboys do so, pretty small. Lots of serious offroad rigs run dry sumps with no problems.

In terms of maintenance, again, treat it like a timing belt on an interference engine...find out how often it should be changed and change it before then. If there's no recommended interval, I figure assuming it will last half as long as a timing belt is a safe bet.

One nice thing about Chevys (ugh that hurt to say) is that you can relatively easily drive the oil pump from a hex drive off the nose of the camshaft, and route an external/electric water pump. The Ford engines would require that you make some funky looking adaptors.

Also... I mean, I "get" the desire to run a cogged belt for the oil pump. But is it really really needed? I mean, P/S pumps were driven off of v-belts for decades and they also work just fine driven off of the flat side of a serpentine drive, not even the multi rib side. Why not a dry sump pump on a 6-rib belt?

GameboyRMH wrote: A shroud would be a good idea, but even without one, the risk is about the same as running an exposed timing belt like all the riceboys do so, pretty small. Lots of serious offroad rigs run dry sumps with no problems. In terms of maintenance, again, treat it like a timing belt on an interference engine...find out how often it should be changed and change it before then. If there's no recommended interval, I figure assuming it will last half as long as a timing belt is a safe bet.

Very good points. Thanks for the advice. Since I don't have to worry about race classes, I've got this bug up my ass to throw as many tricks at it as possible, sort of like a (somewhat) poor man's pro-touring project.

Knurled wrote: One nice thing about Chevys (ugh that hurt to say) is that you can relatively easily drive the oil pump from a hex drive off the nose of the camshaft, and route an external/electric water pump. The Ford engines would require that you make some funky looking adaptors. Also... I mean, I "get" the desire to run a cogged belt for the oil pump. But is it really really needed? I mean, P/S pumps were driven off of v-belts for decades and they also work just fine driven off of the flat side of a serpentine drive, not even the multi rib side. Why not a dry sump pump on a 6-rib belt?

My understanding is because the load of turning the pump increases slippage, but I don't have any data for comparison to what it would be against your power steering pump example.

If a serpentine belt can drive the blower on a Cadillac LSA, which is a 100+hp load iirc, it should drive an oil pump no problem. I suspect the cog belts are a throwback to the v belt days, and it just kinda lived on through cheap NASCAR surplus dry sump rigs.

Edit, using a cog belt makes sense the more I think of it, a cog belt won't slip if it gets covered in oil, coolant, etc. Short of it breaking, you're guaranteed however much oil the pump displaces every revolution. Probably still not necessary for the scope of this discussion though.

I've also wondered why oil pumps use cogged belts...I can only guess that it's for the same reason that giant superchargers do - that the load is so great that any other kind of belt would slip. I've never seen a dry sump system use anything but a cogged belt though.

Theoretically an electric-driven dry sump could also work and would have the advantage of creating full oil pressure before even cranking, but again...they're always driven by cogged belts from the crank.

Funny thing - the Procharger supercharger setup that I've installed on 4th-gen F-bodies is driven by a huge multi-v belt, I think ten ribs wide.

The same exact head unit on a truck 4.8/5.3/6.0 just piggybacks off of the existing 6-rib serpentine belt that drives the power steering and water pump and clutch fan and alternator. Slippage not an issue.

Belt stretch IS an issue. On the 6.0-engined rig that I engineered, I ended up having to go to a belt that you could barely slide on the backside of the water pump, with the automatic tensioner maxed out against its full-tight stop at rest. Under full boost, the tensioner goes to its opposite extreme simply due to belt stretch.

That may be the key. Racers, especially circle track racers, don't like automatic anything. Automatic means it can fail. This redundancy is taken to the extremes that throttle pedals have a bar you can pull UP on, and you'll see manual trans shifters that have a separate lever for every shift arm on the trans. So I can see the desire for cogged belts (or just driving the thing from the nose of the cam or crank). Set the tension once, and since it is positively driven, it doesn't matter if the belt flaps around loose under load.

Those of us who aren't that level of paranoia could run a 6 rib belt and a spring loaded tensioner.

New problem: I'm pretty sure that dry sump pumps have a spline on the end that is just peachy if you are into the various cogged belt drives, but I don't think it'd actually be easy to put a multi-ribbed pulley on there. Back to the drawing board.

Knurled wrote: New problem: I'm pretty sure that dry sump pumps have a spline on the end that is just peachy if you are into the various cogged belt drives, but I don't think it'd actually be *easy* to put a multi-ribbed pulley on there. Back to the drawing board.

Would putting the effort into converting it to a ribbed pulley be simply to integrate it into the rest of the accessory system? I really don't see the cogged setup as a real problem as long as it's reliable, and we've covered that pretty well.

Knurled wrote:

Knurled wrote:

kb58 wrote: Thanks for replying, Keith. Being a FWD setup I can't really benefit from lowering the drivetrain since the transaxle bellhousing hangs down just as low as the stock pan. Also, half shaft angularity doesn't allow much of a drop even if the bellhousing was trimmed.

You're not thinking innovatively enough. Look at the Mazda V6 touring cars where the engine was so low that the right axleshaft went through the engine's V.

Back from the dead because I found the picture while looking for something else, and I did a double-take. Yes, yes, the axle is going through the V. And they have that engine crammed down and back to the point where the crankshaft is by the firewall. Wait a minute. This is a Mazda K engine, a destroked KLDE. Where is the cam drive? FAR OUT! The rules say the engine has to be on the same axis relative to the chassis, they don't say anything about turning it around backwards so the trans is driven off of the nose.

Just to make this even more strange, the car that motor is in isn't even a Mazda.

dry sump pumps use cogged belts because the loads placed on the pumps front bearing with a ribbed, or serpentine belt would likely cause excess wear leading to failure. Typically a dry sump belt has a small to medium tension, but it is nothing like a serpetine belt, or V belt load

I think you guys are way over-thinking this. If its the oil moving around in the corners just get a swinging oil pickup, baffle the pan a bit and add a accu-sump.

Unless you can get the motor down significantly further, and you are going to be faster for it, why increase the modes of failure in the system.

wearymicrobe wrote: I think you guys are way over-thinking this. If its the oil moving around in the corners just get a swinging oil pickup, baffle the pan a bit and add a accu-sump. Unless you can get the motor down significantly further, and you are going to be faster for it, why increase the modes of failure in the system.

That's exactly why I bumped this thread.

Dentt42 wrote:

wearymicrobe wrote: I think you guys are way over-thinking this. If its the oil moving around in the corners just get a swinging oil pickup, baffle the pan a bit and add a accu-sump. Unless you can get the motor down significantly further, and you are going to be faster for it, why increase the modes of failure in the system.

That's exactly why I bumped this thread.

Then spend the money and get a off the shelf system for the motor if possible. I have seen the FSE guys go through motor after motor getting the dry slump stuff to work right.