windage tray
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This is what I was told by an old racer. You can run your oil to the full mark and use a windage tray or...you can leave out the windage tray and run it one quart low with no damage. He said engines were designed to run one quart lower than the dipstick mark. We took that advice and have been doing it on all of our cars for many years with no problems and no loss of oil pressure at any point on the track.
The only thing I don't like about windage trays is that it makes for one more piece of metal in the bottom the engine that can break and fail and cause damage, which trust me I've known several racers this has happened to.
The only thing I don't like about windage trays is that it makes for one more piece of metal in the bottom the engine that can break and fail and cause damage, which trust me I've known several racers this has happened to.
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11,072 Posts
More power to be found with a kickout style pan--24 h.p. with my Moroso.
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9,228 Posts
About 35-40hp on the dyno with the windage tray on our 632.
Are you running a scraper with the kick out pan?
What style windage tray do you suggest? I've got a 468 going together and need to pick which pan, scraper, and tray to use.
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No, just bolt it on; it has a windage tray and baffles and stuff built in. The one I run is #21016 which doesn't seem to be made anymore, but the 21017 looks to be the same pan, plus it will clear a 4" stroke.
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9,228 Posts
Each engine has it's own "best configuration", so it's difficult to say without knowing exactly what you have and what it's use will be. We run a Billet Fabrication 2 piece pan in the race engine and the windage tray is basically a flat sheet of alumium with louvers in it that covers the entire width & length of the pan. The first tray we used was primarily just a screen type but this one yielded noticeable more HP.
On my 510" mostly street engine I used a Stef's pan that had a windage tray and crank scraper but it was of different design. You will find each vendor has their own ideas and designs on pan/tray/scraper designs. For my 510ci engine I called Stef's, told them what I had and they put together the pan/scraper, windage tray package for me. They also added a double layer bottom on the pan which was nice since they aluminum and you don't have to worry about setting the engine directly on the ground etc. when it's out of the car.
To answer your question about added horsepower the answer is yes, anything to prevent "oil roping" is free horsepower. There are things you can do in the lifter valley area to help prevent roping as well. If this is a street engine or "mostly" street engine, I wouldn't be too concerned about any of it, but if you want to do it, call Stef's or Billet Fabrication, tell them what you are doing and have them put it all together for you. They are the professionals and know what works and what doesn't for their style pans.
Thanks Bowtie and Mike for sharing that info. This is mostly a street engine but will get hammered on regularly. I've got a lot of money tied up now in Eagle forged crank and rods and srp pistons machining and balancing not to mention the solid roller setup and headwork so... I figure I better get the right pan and parts to keep windage and airiation down and keep it from going dry at rpm or shutdown. I see all the new pans with the windage kickouts and I know a lot of the pans have the straight scraper installed. Curious if all the time spent fitting a traditional scraper to the contour of the rotating assembly might be a waste of time?-I've done that in the past and spent sometimes 4hours to get a .060 airgap just right. I'd like to see some tests on it.
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IMO for a mostly street engine, it's not worth the effort. A couple horsepower isn't going to make any noticeable difference one way or the other. For street driving the RPM band is going to be fairly small anyway except for a short blast once in a while...it's not like being on the strip, doing a hard burnout and matting it for 1/4 mile with a hard shutdown on the top end.
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4,612 Posts
pan evac
a good pan evac system could help here too
a good pan evac system could help here too
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9,228 Posts
Yes, I forgot to mention a good vacuum pump setup is worth at least 25 hp and helps a lot with oil control too.
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