Oil pan need windage tray or not for drag race?
 

I have my 383 sbc back from the engine shop, the short block and heads are together. Motor is a 383, forged bottom end, 12.5/1 compression, solid roller cam 0.6 lift with Brodix heads.

My question is about the oil pan, do I need a pan with a windage tray or not? I was thinking windage trays were mostly for circle track engines. Thanks for any suggestions.

Larry

Anytime you can control windage its a good thing and worth a few ponies.
I'd say if you got the dough, get the best pan you can find that will fit your chassis.
Goodluck, Charles

Agree with Charles.

Another thing you can do is to buy an Oil Accumalator with electric solenoid and then run the pan 1 qt low if you have a stock 5 qt pan. If you have an aftermarket kick out pan of 7 qts you can use the accumalator like I suggested and run the pan two qts low. What we are doing with this is getting the oil stroage furter away from the spinning crank. There is no negative to a windage tray. The factory High Performance one off the Early Corvettes works great.

Ed

Everyone is in agreement with the windage trays they always help and so do oil pans with trap doors which keep the oil in bottom of the pan once it's there. There's no better insurance than always having oil to the pump pickup. I personally like the screen wrap windage trays because it takes the oil off the rotating assy.

JMO

Zip.

I personaly like a solid, louvered tray. The reason being, is, that, a screen, really doesn't "isolate" the pick-up from windage. Take the age off windage, and we have wind. Its more like a Monsoon/tornado going on in the pan. This can whip up the oil and cause cavitation. Its not so much used to peel oil off a crank, rather to isolate the oil in the sump from the tornado, being created by the spinning crank and rods, which whips up and aereates the oil. With the tray there, it will help to shelter if you will the oil in the sump. A screen, really doesn't do that. It does allow rapid draining, of the oil back into the sump though, which, with a solid tray, can be a problem, which, then, it acts like a big bowl, holding the oil close to the crank, to be picked up by the spinning crank and rods. Thats why a well louvered tray works better. Thats one of the reasons the old Gm corvette type works. If you look at one, it only covers a small amount of the crank, or, more importantly, in the pans they were used in, it shelters the whole sump area, protecting the pick up. Combined with a kicked out pan, and a scraper, to get the oil out of the crank, thats the best set-up for a wet sump pan.

Frank
Advanced Performance
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