Subject: Oil pump cavitation, Oil flow
From: ACRE
Date: 6/2/2004, 8:07 AM


Another data point:
The stock 20B pickup tube is rather long with a number of bends,
which
seemed to me could be a limiting factor in oil flow.  I have a
custom
deeper
pan (about 6"), and I made a custom pickup tube going straight down
from the
pump inlet - as I recall the tube is about 5-1/4" long.  I used a
3/4"
SS
tube with an i.d. that matches the pump inlet quite closely (a tad
larger).
I intended to flare the inlet end of the tube, but decided to forego
that in
order to install the stock inlet screen.

For the dyno runs we ran Castrol 20-50.  The oil pressure regulator
valve in
the engine is 100psi.  The oil goes first through the dyno cooler
loop, and
I don't know what the pressure drop there is.  The flow rate as a
function
of engine RPM is shown on the attached chart. I don't know what pump
speed
is.

The curve is quite linear up to about 5000, and then begins to bend
over a
bit.  Flow at 6000 it is 14.2 gpm.  At 5450 engine rpm the flow is
13.6 gpm
- lower than Francois reports on their engine, but I don't know if
the
gearing ratio is the same.

FWIW,
Al

Thanks Al for this data.

What oil pump model do you have on that 20B?

Assuming you have the '93 model with the side passageway, we get
approximately 45% higher flows on the test rig, with a straight pickup
tube and NO INLET SCREEN.  If we change the pickup tube to one with
the
stock inlet screen, then we get PRECISELY the same flow curve as you
do.

We would have thought that this inlet screen could make that much
difference.  We'll have to test different screen geometries as we
cannot
afford to lose that much flow.

Francois Badoux

Francois, do you have a transparent section of pipe between the pump
and the pressure restrictor valve?

Paul Lamar


Nope!

Francois Badoux

I have been thinking about this for the last couple of weeks and was getting
ready to duplicate your experiment with a front cover and 2d gen oil pump. 
You mentioned oil foam in some of your early posts on this subject. At what
point in the system was that observed? That concerned me because some of our
oil cooling problems could be explained by the existence of oil foam in the
oil cooler. First thing I am going to do is find transparent line
that will live over 100 psi.
 
Paul Lamar
 
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