As you may have seen, I have recently built myself a new man cave in which I have added a lathe and milling machine. Finally I can tackle custom work without needing to find someone who will do it wrong 3 times before its finally right.
With the baby and plenty work around the house, I didnt get as much time to work on Angrrr as I wanted to, but one project which I tackled was yet another attempt to correct my (very weird) oil pressure problem.
As some of you might remember, a while back I had to rebuild my engine due to a loss of oil pressure. At that point the oil light would come on almost everytime I gave the engine a good run. It really was odd. During that rebuild I found a few issues with the case and corrected them - this has lead to much less foaming of the oil, higher oil pressure and no more flickering oil light. Well, not entirely. As I have tuned the car and got it going better, I have also been driving it a bit harder and the oil light has started to come on from time to time again.
So after putting plenty thought into this, I decided that instead of rebuilding the engine again in the hope of finding the cure, I'll make up something fully custom that should definitely work. Instead of using the oil pickup in the case and the case's oil lines to feed the oil pump, I decided to take the oil straight out of the bottom of the sump and plumb it directly into the oil pump ensuring no chance of possible air leaks.
I took a lot more photos, but it seems I need a new camera as it has stopped saving pictures. These are all from my phone...
So I sourced myself a Scat oil sump pickup - I couldnt figure out how to make this and still have any form of ground clearance
This bolts onto the bottom of the deep sump and serves as the new oil pickup and strainer.
From there, I bought myself a chunk of aluminium
and proceeded to cut it into what I wanted.
First I had to make a plate which I could bolt onto my deep sump which I could then bolt the Scat pickup onto. If I had a Scat deep sump, it would have bolted straight up, but mine is made by CB performance and has a much larger drain plate.
drilling the plate
final facing of the plate to make it perfectly flat
final product
Then it was onto the oil pump cover. I made a cover which has both the oil inlet and oil outlets on it. Unfortunately, the pictures of how I made it are all gone... so here are a few final ones
Drilling the cover, which was then cut to size with an end mill
I chose to run a AN-12 hose and thus needed the correct fittings. It was cheaper to buy a weld on fitting and weld it on than to buy a 5/8" NPT tap and a fitting. So here is the cover with the fitting welded on
and with the outlet fitting loctite'd in place
Here we have the pump cover and sump suction plate side by side
Mocking up the kit on the deep sump to figure out which fins to remove
Removing the fins
unsure which way will give the best hose route, so I removed enough fins to give me two options
and now to put it all together
Now for the oil pump
tap and plug both the inlet and outlet holes in the pump so that it cannot suck from or deliver to the case
fit pump, fit cover and finish install
Does it work?
Well, time will tell if this is a permanent fix. But for now, it seems to be working.
Before the mod, I had oil pressure pretty close to the recommended 10psi per 1000rpm. Now, it is much closer to 1bar (15psi) per 1000rpm. So even when driving normally, my oil pressure is up.
As yet, the oil light hasnt come back on while driving. So holding thumbs that this is a fix.
I think acpaterson described the sensory overload the passenger experiences well in his post on the previous page! Alan, I could not have said it any better. All this, while being pinned back into those awesome Recaro seats.
