We had lots of oil starvation on 2G DSM and I expect the same happening for EVOs as well. Faster drivers would reach this point sooner too. Lateral Gs on that given DSM were over 1.5 and that is plenty enough to move all of the oil away though longer sweepers.

 

nothing has changed between the engine & oiling for a 2g vs an evo?

i'm just curious if all the sm, and asp guys for that matter, have done something to keep from oil starving.

partly because as street tires continue to improve, this is something that one day the slower street-tired cars will have to deal with potentially as well. i knew this was the case for road racing, i didnt know this was prevalent for autocross

 

This is what I sent to Heel2toe on what I've done

I also have the kiggly HLA, no balance shafts, no oil squirter. So in my case, I've just removed everything that uses oil that I don't need. I'm sure there's a point where that's not enough, but so far I'm not logging oil pressure dropping.

On the porting of OFH, I've had to pull mine off twice to port more and more to control pressure spiking with just a throttle blip. And that's after having done it before with a DSM that I had to do 3 times.

 

^There you go nothing to worry about in your case
On a serious note, this was exactly what I was getting at. Previously this was solely an issue with folks running Hohos. Since 2015 and the release of the next gen street tires i.e Re71s Rival S etc etc that gap from street to race really isnt that huge.

I wish I saved all my old oil filters or better yet made it a habit to cut them open and inspect after every change. I feel that would have been very interesting to see if there was any bearing material in there from racing on 285 Ziis.

At the end of the day as you push the limits its easy to not address things like oiling and think you'll be OK. I said I was going to upgrade my pan this winter and look where that got me. Everything is perfectly fine until it isnt.

 

good to know - so no upgraded pan, accusump, etc.?

for myself, i haven't ported anything, but i run a kiggly hla, crank scraper, and buschur baffled pan (i know that last one doesn't do much) - i realize these aren't legal for STU but i don't run nats, i'd say they're pretty minor/nil for performance, and i've got bigger things (engine health) to worry about.

i do a UOA for every change i do, just to see if anything like this crops up. if your theory of repeated abuse leading to failure is true, it would show up in these, though i guess you wouldn't be changing the oil that often.

i moreso wanted to check to make sure it wasn't something unusual going on with your oiling system/situation that caused you to starve where most people aren't - porting the head like what dallas did to drain better would help but the kiggly should be preventing too much oil from accumulating in the head anyway (though obviously the porting will help, i'm just curious how much) - but none of the major fixes, i.e., an actual built pan.

 

Thanks for posting that message up Dallas! Not to steal your thunder but to add to what you told me the other day porting of oil drain back ports in both the head and the block can be extremely beneficial. What good is oil sitting puddled in your head vs it being channeled back down to the filter to clean it and go through the cooler to cool it down. Not to mention more in the pan means less chance of the pickup going dry.

There is a youtuber Jafromobile (thanks Dallas for the rec on this too!) who has some extensive videos that get into the ins and outs of cleaning up these ports and further explains some of the issues with both low oil pressure as well as too much oil pressure, which is especially an issue when it comes to deleting balance shafts.

My car already had a Kiggly HLA and I will be upgrading to a baffled oil pan for extra insurance but I know I will also spend some time to clean up the ports on my head and block as well as oil filter housing (might hold off on this until first start to see what kind of pressure I have and then adjust accordingly.) But it's little tricks like these that unless I missed it elsewhere, don't seem to be commonly discussed but are easy to address especially when your motor is down for little to no cost at all aside from time if you already have a good assortment of grinders burrs etc.

 

Forgot to mention that we had to run accusump on 2G after we lost few engines and that stopped that killing the engines because of the oil starvation - not the other reasons!

Also, I am using "we" here even though I was just an the side as a part time consultant - Charles was the one dealing with all of this and I am sharing his experience. When I was in 2G, I was on 245s and they didn't create that much of lateral Gs as when the car moved to 285s.

As of the street tire used, I don't think numbers are there to make it really dangerous for the engines. I am seeing 1.1 to 1.2 on my car with some spikes over that, but nothing for longer amount of time. I believe STU cars should be 0.1 to 0.2 higher and they might be on the edge were things could go south. I would run a bit of extra oil and that would be it. Hohos on the other hand are different story and I am sure even ASP EVOs are in dangerous zone.

 

Sending in your oil will certainly help to catch these things before they happen. But seems like cutting open a filter is also an easy way to check albeit less scientific but also takes about 5 minutes even without a proper cutting tool and the results are right there in front of you. Ill post pictures of my two oil fitlers when I get home from work to show you what I found. To put it bluntly it was obvious what had happened.

As to your other point while the Kiggly helps keep the oil in the pan there is still oil in the head to lubricate the valvetrain. The problem however is when the oil puddles inside the head. And more problematic, is that there can be cases where casting flash can block off these ports and restrict flow immensely. Now every head and block is slightly different but its little tweaks here and there that arent the be all end all fix as quite frankly everything is a bandaide short of a dry sump but they are all steps in the right direction.

 

My car had one of the drains nearly blocked off with casting flash. Most of the flash can be knocked out with a punch when the head is off but sometimes it has to be ground out (mine was that way). Then you can also open things up a little there too which my builder did when he did a mild port job for me (was only $75 while doing valve and he de-shrouded the valves and cleaned the port casting flash)

 

i'm sorry for the non-technical - what is casting flash? is it the way the head is built from the factory?

 

Sam

Like this:

 

This is a good video that shows some of the potential issues. Im in the process of going through his videos as I feel they are extremely well done. Dallas gets 5 points for turning me onto his videos

I took a screenshot from the video which shows exactly what we're talking about in regards to casting flash blocking oil ports. This is of course an extreme example and Im not suggesting that your motor looks like this too but the point remains that it can be an issue and cleaning up things like this can go a long way.

 

I had an engine failure in 2013 that I suspect was related to oil starvation. Spun the #2 bearing and launched the rod through the block at high rpm after a right hand sweeper. The huge window was created by the rod taking the balance shaft with it.



My build in 2014 included a Kiggly HLA, Buschur baffled pan (lol), and 3qt accusump to try to remedy the oiling issues. I also took the time to install an oil pressure gauge and I never witnessed any issues after all that. At the time I was running it on 285 r-compounds with a "mild" aero package.

The latest build in progress is replacing the Buschur pan with an AMS (still lol), and won't have any oil squirters since it's a 4G64. I considered going full dry sump, but that seemed a little overkill for an autox specific build. The car will be running either 315 or 335 Hoosiers and I'll have more aero than the 2014 version. We'll see how it goes.

 

^ wow. theoretically, eventually, even ST guys will have oil starve issues when it comes down to it i guess

 

^Ouch there's some carnage! Mine wasnt nearly as catastrophic thankfully which saves me the cost of a block. What rods were in there those dont look to be OEM. Makes me wonder if the rod bolt let go? What did the rest of the bearings look like? I was under the impression if its from oil starvation #4 will go first. That almost seems like part failure vs lack of oil but lets be honest wtf do I know.

On another note thats one way to remove the balance shaft