I'm working on building a oil pan baffle/windage tray for the dodge 2.4 turbo engine that I will be putting in my locost.
The first picture shows the baffles. There will be hinged trap doors that swing towards the middle where the cutouts are. The oil pickup sits in the rectangular area cast into the bottom of the pan.
The second picture shows the top/windage tray. The baffles will be welded to this piece. The lines between the small holes will be slotted and bent into louvers. The medium holes in a row along one side are for oil return from the head. The large holes will have pipe standoffs welded in them to hold the whole mess off the bottom of the block.
Thoughts?
looks better than mine...
Can someone provide the "explanation for dummies" of a windage tray? I have always been curious to it's exact function.
pinchvalve wrote:
Can someone provide the "explanation for dummies" of a windage tray? I have always been curious to it's exact function.
It blocks the oil flung off the crank from hitting the oil in the pan at high speed. Instead it slowly drains back into the pan. This means less of the oil getting whipped into a froth.
Extend the trap doors so that they take up as much of the width of the partitions as possible. As it is right now it looks like a lot of oil would get trapped away from the pickup (and fill up the frontmost partition, through that semicircular gap) if you were to brake and turn left.
Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming! The semi-curricular gap in the far baffle will be occupied by the oil pickup, similar to the one pictured by moparman. I agree that the doors seem small, but there isn't any room to expand them. They are constrained by the sump wall and the oil pickup location on both baffles.
I realized last night I forgot to leave room for the dip-stick to pass through, so I will have to add one more hole.
GameboyRMH wrote:
pinchvalve wrote:
Can someone provide the "explanation for dummies" of a windage tray? I have always been curious to it's exact function.
It blocks the oil flung off the crank from hitting the oil in the pan at high speed. Instead it slowly drains back into the pan. This means less of the oil getting whipped into a froth.
and sometimes you also integrate a scraper into them to scrape the oil off the crank and rods to keep it from getting whipped around and using up power that could otherwise be used to make the car go faster..
Should the louver openings in the windage tray point towards or away from the direction of rotation of the crank? ie, in this picture the crank is located above the tray and spins in a counter-clockwise direction, should the louver openings point left or right?
I figured they should point to the left to collect the oil spray off the crank and direct it into the oil pan, but the tray that I am, uh...taking inspiration from... has them pointing to the right, which would tend to keep the oil spray separated from the sump below.
Thoughts???
every windage tray that i've seen has had the louvers stamped so that the oil gets thrown thru them as it comes off the crank..
here's one for a small block Chevy:
as you look at it, the front of the engine is to the left, with the bottom of the crank rotating past it from the bottom of the pic to the top.. the louvers are stamped so the oil pretty much gets thrown thru them into the sump..
here's another design that would be pretty easy to replicate with some cheap expanded metal oriented to act as thousands of little louvers:
I guess you could do it either way. Having it oriented so that the oil gets thrown through the louvers means more oil in the pan but more froth. Having the oil thrown onto the louvers means less oil in the pan but less froth. I think I'd go with the latter and overfill slightly to compensate.
