Re: Design Philosophy Question / Large oil sumps v. coolers

[bearbvd@domain.elided (Greg Hermann)]

At 11:40 AM 3/4/02, McCarty, Richard wrote:
>Hello All -
>I was thinking about the 7 qt. oil sump in my GTV the other day and it got
>me wondering about the pros and cons of using such a large sump and oil
>capacity. The finned hammerhead sump sure is neat looking and having to put
>in 7 qts of 20w-50 at oil changes sounds impressive, but the downside is it
>takes 20-30 mins of driving for the oil to reach operating temp ( I don't
>have an oil temp gauge, the 20-30 min figure is a guess based on the oil
>pressure at idle ). So here are my questions:
>
>1) Does the engine need all 7 qts to prevent the sump from getting dry
>during hard driving ?
>
>2) Or is the extra oil capacity to help the sump act as an oil cooler ?
>
>3) Wouldn't make more sense ( if #1 is not true ) to fit a smaller sump for
>faster warm ups and an external thermostatically controlled oil cooler ? I
>can't imagine that economics has anything to do with it, those beautiful Al
>sumps can't be cheap to make...

Building the engine with a higher compression ratio will help the oil to
warm up a LOT quicker, Rich-- :-)

Greg
>
>Peace,
>Rich M
>72 GTV

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