Jim: I should have done a better job checking the math. I trusted Derek's numbers, those aren't mine (the 15% claim). Just for giggles, say it was TWICE the volume, and you have same PSI. The stock system with the other mods considered aside from drilling with the proper PSI will provide what you need many times over for a stock rebuild, so why bother? "Or if I was arguing the way some people have recently taken to, I'd use the 5psi figure and tell you you only have 2psi to work with. That has to force the oil through that long, restricted passageway with 90 degree bends, sharp edges, restrictions and voids with many eddies along the way." The lower the 'psi' on the 'suction' end, the easier time it would have flowing through a smaller diameter inlet. It would simply move the oil along a bit quicker vs a larger diameter inlet, but there would be no restrictions at this low pressure. Even if it was as low as 2 psi (would it even work this low?), I don't see it having to 'force' its way through much of anything. Would you say that an engine needs a 3" dual exhaust so it can idle better because the 2 1/2" system restricts it too much at idle? lol I definitely encourage overengineering, but there is a line somewhere on what is needed and what is not. I have some serious OCD tendencies, and I thought I was bad...so I DO understand these urges. Aside from this, I'm not the only one in the world who thinks this way, so I reckon everyone outside of those who want to overkill something has flawed logic. I just shrug my shoulders. JP: I think that was Larry who posted what you're talking about. I could be wrong (just ask around--I'm always wrong! lol)
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai...ahUKEwjvuL3awqrXAhWj6oMKHbrDCGMQzzkIJw&adurl= Something like this should work. Should be able to get it at a hardware store. Just need the right thread type
Here's a little something taken from this website: http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2013/06/oiling-system-technology/ "The old rule of thumb of running 10 psi of oil pressure for every 1,000 rpm is still valid for most applications. But some racers are getting by with less oil pressure and are gaining anywhere from 5 to 30 or more horsepower! It takes a certain amount of horsepower to drive an oil pump, so using the least amount of oil pressure that’s necessary to maintain a safe level of lubrication saves power that would otherwise be needed for the pump. Many NASCAR teams are running less than 5 psi of oil pressure per 1,000 rpm, and are using low viscosity synthetic oils with tighter bearing clearances to keep the oil film in the bearings."
It’s a hard comparison thou. That engine only runs 400 miles/1 race or possibly a second race before rebuilding. And they have coatings on many of the parts. Forged crank. Longevity of engine is not going to be the main concern. Might not be a good plan for street cars.
That's a good point Gary. My understanding of the basics is that it's more about flow and maintaining a cushion, pressure being the net effect of resistance to flow. This tends to lean the argument towards increasing the capability from the supply side. A super stock trick with some platforms has been to cut down the oil gears until there was no excess flow pushed through the relief valve, the net effect being to 'almost' run out of oil supply at the end of the track (max rpm). This would ensure the least amount of parasitic drag and possibly reducing the introduction of air. (Oil supply as in the pump being able to handle what escapes at the max rpm, without just pumping too much up top. I've read how that test was rigged up and done, the details escape complete description for obvious reasons of the level of destruction involved with failures. The above anecdote as well as the following strongly illustrate the importance of tribal knowledge with any specific platform. Everyone being at different levels of communication, understanding and applying concepts when we aren't being paid for our research or literary contributions...begs for the argument of opinions to shift weight from those various communication skills to putting weight behind peoples experiences even if they don't have an entirely convincing logic to convey. Sorry if that seems scrambled... just stating that Jim for example, sees certain issues doing it one way vs the other. Machinists don't seem worried by the drilling methods, even understanding the OP's confidence level. Again, I'm not siding with any arguments...the point of all of this is to share information that could help other enthusiasts. The oil mod side of this doesn't have to prove anything other than they see less failures to suggest that it's a good idea. This is at an impasse'. There is not going to be any past credible info or financing to do enough testing to satisfy everyone's mind.
I work in a machine shop. I have seen a block where the oil galley mod had broke thru.our repair was to place a brass tube measured to fit.I had a 350 Buick come in where the owner had 70 style rocker shaft with plugs at end of tube to emulate 68 rockers. I saw 455 with scored lifter bores whereupon I insisted th
They needed bushings its tough being a Buick motor.The odds are against u. Thus guy has buicks we get once in a while Pontiac hard core
I see you're coming to your senses, Vicky. Increasing the suction holes does NOT increase oil pressure, that is STILL dictated by the bearing clearances.(period)But larger suction holes WOULD decrease parasitic HP loss. Increasing the suction holes DECREASES the amount of strain on the front cam bearing, distributor gear and cam drive gear. Decreasing that strain = LESS POWER NEEDED TO DRIVE THOSE COMPONENTS! The very happy side effect is increased volume and less strain = is less chance of those parts to fail, like Mr. sony's did. Mr.sony's engine was getting oil from the crank splashing it like a lawn mower gets oil, the one and ONLY reason it lived at all with zero oil pressure. When the cam bearing melted down, that is what killed his engine because now the pump was able to pull enough oil away from the crank so it wasn't getting any splash oiling and wasn't enough oil pressure for it to live. A friend with a 580 HP sbc 383 lost oil pressure and thought it was the gauge and still drove that thing revving it to 7,000 RPM regularly the rest of the day at the dunes(about 6 more hours of thrashing it) and even managed to kill another TH350 with an zero oil pressure engine at the end of the day! Zero damage to that engine because he has a low profile oil pan and no windage tray so the crank slung the oil he needed for the engine to survive, like a lawn mower does. The oil gets dirty really fast that way though because of not going through a filter. There is a new oil pump on the thing now with NO other work to it and at the end of this year's season the last day of the year he broke yet another TH350 trans with the same engine! It was 2 years ago when the oil pump failed because of the bolt on oil pickup from jumping that thing in the dunes jarred it loose and it broke off. A little piece of that tab got sucked in the pump seizing it, when the pump seized, it even broke the oil pump drive shaft and the engine still lives! And yeah, I did a quick percentage of how much larger the 1/2" hole is compared to a 7/16" which is slightly under 15%, I didn't do the square inch comparison that Jim did that makes it even more substantial. So yeah, open up those clearances on YOUR Buick engine and run the unmodified factory suction and start running moonshine with it again with your 10 psi per thousand and see how long it is before it has a total meltdown. The OP being in England can take the truck to Germany to drive it on one of those highways and may want to burn the carbon out of it while he has the chance. With the oil mods there would be no worries doing so. And as far as breaking the drill bit off in the block, only if someone is falling down drunk like the example I wrote in a previous post would that happen and that's why I recommended waiting until sobering up before doing the mods. I have NEVER heard of anyone scrapping a block doing the mentioned mods. Sean, did you scrap a block? Is that why you're taking the stand you're taking? If so, you are Canadian, were there Canadian beers involved when you scrapped that block? Has anyone out there that have done these mods scrapped a block because of doing them? JP, if you have access to a mill of some sort which IIRC(if I recall correctly) you do, you can drill the block with the mill if you don't trust you hand drilling skills. The mill will need to have a head that can swivel to one side and adjusting the head in its full forward position so it will reach. Mount the block to the side of the table so you'll have enough room to drill(the block is to long for most mills to have enough travel to drill the longer hole in front of the block with it on top of the table) Setup the face of the block square to the plane of the spindle and indicate the hole in and you can drill the thing out to 5/8" without issue! But 1/2" would be enough for your engine. To drill the pickup hole with the mill, look at my avatar, that is a pic of a sbb 350 block setup to drill the pickup hole. The head needs to be set to the angle of the hole. The hole in that block in the pic was drilled to 9/16" with zero issues VERY easy to do on the mill(could/should of went to 5/8").(the setup was the hardest part of drilling the hole which was still super easy to do!) I used a 7/16" piece of round stock in the hole with an indicator in the drill chuck to indicate the up and down of the round stock that was inserted in the 7/16" hole by moving the spindle out then back in, at the front and 90* from there until the head was very close to zeroed with the round stock, and ready to drill! Super easy with ZERO chances of "scrapping the block". Now that the chance to scrap the block is out of the equation, all that is left is the work to do the mod, and with a mill is a VERY easy task that with the extra setup time will still only take around an hour or less to do. There you go, let the naysayer commence to her naysaying.
This seems to have caused some confusion so let's try again. The first thing that has to be done is to set a zero reference, as it seems we need that to communicate at all. I thought I was being clear enough but apparently not. So if you take sea level atmospheric pressure to be zero it makes it harder to understand but it's still possible. It's not really zero of course, it is actually 14.7psi absolute. Now if you have a perfect vacuum somewhere you can use that 14.7psi to move a liquid from an open container at sea level into that vacuum. It has exactly the same effect as if you applied 14.7psi to your container and opened the other end to the air. If you have a partial vacuum you can use whatever amount of vaccuum you have to do the same job, just not as quickly. It's pretty proportional so for any fraction of that 14.7psi you can move roughly that fraction of your liquid, disregarding things like surface friction, etc which can add up. The connection between the two is a restriction that will determine the rate at which your liquid can be moved from one to the other for a given pressure. So if you have 1/2 the pressure you will move 1/2 the flow rate. If you double the resistance to flow you cut the flow rate to 1/2. If you halve the pressure and double the resistance you reduce the flow to 1/4. As your restriction increases, in order to maintain the same flow you have to increase the pressure across the restriction. If you want to double the flow you have to either cut the resistance in half or double the pressure. So if you double the resistance you have to double the pressure but there is a definite limit to how far you can go, the absolute maximum under any condition whatsoever, assuming you have a hard vacuum, being 14.7psi at sea level. So that is what Parker is talking about when they quote a max vacuum figure for their pump inlet, they are saying they don't want you to attempt pumping oil with it if the pressure at the inlet is X amount less than atmospheric. Mainly because it will cause the pump to cavitate. It will then be noisy, won't pump well, and may damage the pump. For the 10psi specification that means the absolute pressure at the pump inlet cannot be less than 4.7psi absolute, 10 less than the 14.7 absolute at sea level. I hope you are following this so far. Your 14.7psi absolute is the same as 30" of mercury, so rounding up to 15psi for convenience, Parker is saying their pump can develop about 20" of vacuum at the inlet. 10" of vacuum in the case of the 5psi spec. So far this is all basic stuff, so in the case of the SBB the crankcase is the container open to atmospheric, the pump is the partial vacuum and the oil galley is the connection between the two. The pump creates a partial vacuum and the connection is the resistance to flow. The working range is determined by the pump inlet maximum absolute pressure rating, which can be stated in inches of vacuum, probably somewhere in the range of 5-20", which is to say that under the best possible conditions you still have to have at least 5psi of atmospheric pressure left over from the 15psi atmospheric after delivering adequate flow to match the pump's discharge rate. This has to take into account the operating speed range of the engine, so at redline it has to meet the minimum flow requirements. If the pump has lower restriction on the discharge it is going to discharge a little more just because there will be less leakage around the gears so that adds to the flow requirement. Incremental. Now assuming this is now all clear as mud, to simplify somewhat: Atmospheric pressure forces the oil through the suction galley after the pump generates a partial vacuum. Flow is dependent on that vacuum level and the inlet restriction and head. The discharge can impact that a little, but not much. However, inlet restriction can greatly affect the discharge. This is a positive displacement pump. So for each rotation it will discharge a fixed volume of oil. Discharge pressure is largely irrelevant, the volume will be the same provided adequate volume is delivered to the inlet. Providing any more oil to the pump than the fixed amount of the pump's displacement will have no effect on discharge pressure or volume. However providing less than the pump's fixed volume will cause the discharge volume and pressure to drop off. So let's look at this another way. If increasing flow to the pump inlet increases engine oil pressure it is because inlet flow is inadequate to begin with. Have we ever seen this happen at street engine speeds? If we have it is a very clear indication that there was too much restriction to the pump inlet. I think the answer is "yes". But we may not have had adequate specific testing in this one particular area to generate the necessary mountain of data to convince the skeptics. I do know of engines that have had everything done in attempting to remedy the oiling issues and still had problems up until the journal was drilled, at which point the problem went away. That seems like clear enough evidence to me. Jim
... how is the crank flinging oil into the lifter valley? And the crank doesn't swing into the oil, so how would it even have any oil to fling? And the cam bearing didn't melt. It shredded. I can get a pic tomorrow if you want.
I do think this moly lube is what helped my engine live. I put this on every bearing, and on the cam and lifters. JP if you're still here lol, use some solid (non liquid) moly-graphite lube upon assembly if you haven't put the engine together. I've always used this stuff, never let me down. I don't know if you have this particular brand in the UK, but something with moly and or graphite in it. Make sure the bearings are SPOTLESS. Even a spec of dirt can cause some scouring.
I think it's been mentioned here before but using the example of the BB Mopar perfectly illustrates the same issues. Being proportionately larger in architecture and crank journal size, even with the reductions to the BBC size...the pickup is too large to route inside the block. This has been done before mega oil pumps were commonly made. I'm sure I've seen a few 455's done this way too.
Im still here!!! I read and I smile as I can see you are all very knowledgable people... you all know lots and opinions differ, which is good. that's what makes the brain keep up and that's what makes development happen. discussions are always good and gives me a lot to read and learn about.
I think this one is past the stage where the adults are still arguing about something the kids said/did and have long left the situation. Peeking back every so often and feeling guilty about making them fight [JP]...you is good people!
Well I certainly started this whole thing off as a 'preference' opinion based on stock applications, yet all the experiences for doing these mods are not aimed at stock engines, are they? My goal was never to try and talk anyone out of anything, only to show that these extensive mods are indeed necessary on heavily built engines, but not so much for stock-mild, making it a preference. This is when the whole debate began. (this post isn't necessarily aimed at you, Tony--just using your post quote as a foundation) If less failures are seen with oil mods vs no oil mods, then it is surely with engines above mild build and usage. How many of you guys build or how much of this is being applied to mild builds? It is certainly being suggested here to do it to every engine built, which of course would do nothing but improve the oiling capability, but again, and it seems I must reiterate this to death--is not necessary for mild applications. There will be oiling mods done regardless with improved front cam bearing and oil pump remedies, which will solve all the problems on stock engines. They simply do not need all that extra volume, and pressure can still be the same even though there will be the 'restriction' at the entry point. It's simply not restricted enough to even come close to posing a problem when engines are mild and will see less than 5500 RPM. There is no 'confusion', other than maybe Derek's inebriated state of mind trying to figure out whose phone number he's actually got. lol My mind is already satisfied. It doesn't matter which type of oiling system is being used here, and you can describe how it functions to the umpteenth detail, but it all boils down to whether or not it works. Does it? Yes it does. Is it fine for stock-moderate engines? Yes. Yes, it is (with bearing swap and oil pump remedies). Do you want to improve it when operation levels increase above 5500 RPM? Absolutely. This could go on forever. The only real thing being debated here is the need for increased oil passage pickup for a stock application. We all know you need to do it for racing engines, and on any engine platform. Buick's oiling system had issues from the factory, but it is a minor fix with one bearing swap and good oil pump clearances. There is plenty of volume and pressure at this level of performance. We see a lot of 'low oil pressure' posts here in the forums, and none of them can be traced back to the factory oiling passages. It's either the front cam bearing, or more often, the oil pump clearance and/or expansion of the aluminum cover when it warms up, which is remedied with the booster plate. I'm sure there are machine chops who can do the mods to the oil passage in a controlled environment with little to no issues or risks. If I were selling something, wouldn't it make my advocating said product or service questionable to its 'utmost necessity'? Not saying this is happening, but it is certainly something to take into consideration, and at the very least, shines a negative light on all the tenacity on how it must be painfully described in the most minute detail on how oiling systems work and just how 'inadequate' they all are from the factory, even for factory-type build engines. BUT---we have the problem solver just for YOU, send 5 easy payments of xxxx to....
Just as a small addendum, the inlet of a pump always has restriction, even if the pump is submerged in the sump and most of the inlet is cut away. There will always be resistance to flow. Engineers try to minimize that restriction as much as is practical because it does two things: It reduces the efficiency of the pump, and it limits the useful suction range. At some vacuum figure every pump will cavitate. This means that the pump pulls voids out of the liquid. Places where there is no oil. No vapor, no air, no oil, nothing. When these voids hit the gears bad things happen. Now gear pumps are pretty durable so unlike centrifugal pumps you don't usually see erosion of the parts occur as a result, but at the very least the pump can't move any fluid along if there isn't any in the gears, and it usually makes noise although you may not hear it over the engine. Most gear pumps are incapable of pulling 20" of vacuum in oil. And the closer you run to the pump's limitations the higher the risk that some unknown factor will cause cavitation. Did the discharge volume go up incrementally because pressure dropped off due to larger than optimum bearing clearances? If you are close enough that will do it. Did the oil's formulation change? That definitely can do it. Is the engine running a few degrees warm? That also will do it. Is there any debris on the pickup screen? Has the pickup tube been dented? Is the hole in the pickup tube gasket the wrong size? Did the bean counters want to save a few pennies on drill bits and machining time? The list goes on. What I'm trying to say is, be smart and give yourself a little safety margin. Don't run so close to the edge when it doesn't gain you anything. There is no advantage to be had in under-oiling an engine. It can only lead to bad things. No other single thing can kill an engine so quickly. The Buick suction system is compromised from the very start with a long flow path. The longer the path the greater the resistance. The pump has to lift the oil. There are bends. Bends create eddies. Eddies generate voids. Voids do bad things. Even if all you do is go to 1/2" that's a 30% reduction in resistance to flow, and you can hardly screw that up. It's cast iron, so not at all hard to drill. Shouldn't be more than a 5 minute job. It is by far the cheapest insurance you can buy when doing an engine rebuild. Jim
Maybe, maybe not, but it does drive home a very valid point. That race engine is going to see a ton more strain in its short lifespan than any stock engine will ever dream of seeing.
Even with all this effort you're putting in here, Jim, your own admission (here and in past various postings) is that it is a "little safety margin", which to me, indicates that it is not a day to night transformation using this type of oiling system, which proves that even you are saying (in so many words) that the factory oiling passages are adequate for stock/mild/moderate type builds with less oiling demands. It doesn't double the oiling ability (even if it did, as I said previously, it's not required on stock builds), and it's a shoddy design (as is the innuendo here), so all you're doing is propping it up with crutches and bandaids. Just let the damn thing be already. lol
