Dry sump Tank

Update and question.

Guys the engine is now ran in and rocking. After monitoring things. Oil pressure at idle 40lbs and higher rpms around 19lbs, Heads temp seems stable @ around 170  and  Oil temp is going upto 260f only when l give it some welly @6k rpm's so have to back off the throttle. Oil I'm using is Valvoline Vr1 racing oil (mineral). 

Question; what is a safe oil temp to be at before the oil starts to break down on these aircooled engines.???

I read this;

For a dual-purpose car, engine oil needs to be at least 220 degrees F to burn off all the deposits and accumulated water vapor. For every pound of fuel burned in an engine, the combustion process also generates a pound of water! If engine sump temperatures rarely exceed 212 degrees (water’s boiling point), the water will mix with sulfur (another combustion by-product) and create acids that can eventually damage bearings.

As for ultimate power potential, the general consensus among most racers is that hot oil and cool water make more power in most engines. Cold engine oil causes excessive frictional drag on the bearings and cylinder walls. A quality conventional motor oil will tolerate oil sump temperatures of up to 250 degrees, but starts breaking down over 275 degrees. The traditional approach is to try to hold oil temperatures between 230 and 260 degrees. Even on a short-duration, drag-only combo where oil is frequently changed, I would not want to routinely see under-200-degree oil temps.

Am l right in thinking this applies for aircooled engines also????

Where the hell did you get THAT?

Oops,   Sorry.....Injust realized that clip was from a watercooled point of view.  My bad.

I've never heard of running either VW or Porsche street engines over 230°F for appreciable periods of time unless they're dry-sumped OR are flat-out racing engines.

And how do you get the oil temp up to 260° when you say that the head temp is around 170° ??

According to the Gene Berg web site:  "how hot is hot? How hot is your oil? Over 230F? This can cause case studs to pull out, head and case sealing surfaces to warp, cases to be internally distorted, permanent case metal fatigue and engine bearings to wear prematurely."

I have turned VW engines to welded boat-anchors at just over 240°F

and I don't buy that stuff about boiling off water over 212°.  Water will evaporate from the case as part of the heated frothing/vapourizing of the oil -THAT's why you don't get that beige scum under the oil filler cap unless the oil temp is below 180° most of the time.  Once the oil temp gets above 190°-200° the beige water-scum disappears.

Looks like he has the head temp and oil temp mixed up.

Head 260*

Oil  170* me thinks

Why is the oil pressure lower as RPMs increase?

Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:

Why is the oil pressure lower as RPMs increase?

It does seem odd thinking about it and l  did wonder before. Ok one thing first. Just looking at the Dakota set up instruction l may not have set to the right settings. Let me sort this and I'll report back.

If that's the OP reading, something is wrong. Is your gauge wired correctly? 

Is it measuring oil pressure in "Stones"?  (He is in England, after all...)

Oh, wait....It still should go up as rpm climbs, even in Stones (but the math is even harder than converting Kilometers to miles).   Is the gauge cluster set up correctly or Bass-Ackwards?   Sounds like everything is flipped.

You also asked: 

Oil I'm using is Valvoline Vr1 racing oil (mineral). 

Question; what is a safe oil temp to be at before the oil starts to break down on these aircooled engines.???

The case will warp before the oil breaks down - for mineral oil IIRC it's over 300F.

It tends to lose viscosity or "slipperiness" faster than Dino or full Synthetic so the racing guys usually only run it over a 3-day weekend and then change it out.  Maybe has 8 - 12 hours run time on it, Max.  Is this for break-in and then you'll change to something else like Royal Purple or Mobile 1?  I don't know what's available in the UK, but it must be similar to here.  We've all got the same toys...   If it's break-in oil, then change it for Dino (straight 30 or 40 weight) after 300 - 500 miles, then change it again to something like 10W-40 (a blend is nice here) at 1,000 miles and every 3K after that.  that process will seat your rings nicely.  gn

Ok just to update.

Oil temp was getting to close for comfort. So with the only oil cooler in the DTM, I've now introduced 2 Setrab oil coolers up front and a thermostat. I made the decision to go up front due to little space l have at the back. Not been easy bending all the pipe work etc but happy with the result. 

Just need to prime the lines with oil and test it.  Fingers crossed it should be good now at the higher rpm'??

Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:

One sender, and yes I monitor the temp. I sent the "combi" gauge out to North Hollywood Speedometer to get it calibrated to the sensor.

I also monitor pressure.

Fuel just gets a light, and the trip odometer.

 

 

Stan, I sent my gauge to No Hollywood and asked them to put numbers on my temp gauge like yours and they said they couldn't do it. They said the numbered gauges are direct lit from the front and the Chinese gauges are back lit so they said it couldn't be done. How did you do it?

They re-screened the face of my existing gauge I believe. My gauge was from 2005, so it might have been Brazilian rather than Chinese. 

Talk to Harmut. Show him the picture of my gauge.  The whole backlit, front-lit thing makes no sense to me. It's been 10 years, but he did it then and I see no reason why he can't do it now. 

Man this guy can fab!  Look at the holes in the drum skin!

Richard - your fabricating skills are impressive. Nice job on running those oil lines to the cooler! 

I eagerly await the results of this.

RichardMaxwell posted:

Ok just to update.

Oil temp was getting to close for comfort. So with the only oil cooler in the DTM, I've now introduced 2 Setrab oil coolers up front and a thermostat. I made the decision to go up front due to little space l have at the back. Not been easy bending all the pipe work etc but happy with the result. 

Just need to prime the lines with oil and test it.  Fingers crossed it should be good now at the higher rpm'??

Will you need bleeders on the high spots of those runs to the front ? 

MusbJim posted:

Richard - your fabricating skills are impressive. Nice job on running those oil lines to the cooler! 

Indeed. Well done.

What size are the lines? Did you put the cooler in the scavenging circuit?

Stan Galat, '05 IM, 2276, Nowhere, USA posted:

MusbJim posted:

Richard - your fabricating skills are impressive. Nice job on running those oil lines to the cooler! 

Indeed. Well done.

What size are the lines? Did you put the cooler in the scavenging circuit?

Stan the oil lines are -10 which is 5/8 I.d.

l did put the cooler in the scavage circuit. I also ran the oil cooler is series rather than parallel. 

David Stroud posted:

RichardMaxwell posted:

Ok just to update.

Oil temp was getting to close for comfort. So with the only oil cooler in the DTM, I've now introduced 2 Setrab oil coolers up front and a thermostat. I made the decision to go up front due to little space l have at the back. Not been easy bending all the pipe work etc but happy with the result. 

Just need to prime the lines with oil and test it.  Fingers crossed it should be good now at the higher rpm'??

Will you need bleeders on the high spots of those runs to the front ? 

Shouldnt think so. I've got an 1.5 litre big syringe thing that l used to prime the lines and coolers. The lines and cooler take an additional 2.5 ltrs of oil. Basically disconnected the oil cooler side of the thermostat and connected the syringe to the flow pipe and pump it through until it came out the return pipe. So should think I'll need bleed valves unless you can advise??

Fpcopo VS posted:

Man this guy can fab!  Look at the holes in the drum skin!

Thanks,

Problem with the drum skins is no air gets past them from the holes in the wheels for cooling. I drilled them, then put a twist in the rear holes to act a little like a scoop to help get air in. Don't think the pics show this . Couldnt twist the front the same, the caliper is to close so the hole Straight hole will have to be enough. Every little helps l think. Got to be better than no holes.

RichardMaxwell posted:

Fpcopo VS posted:

Man this guy can fab!  Look at the holes in the drum skin!

Thanks,

Problem with the drum skins is no air gets past them from the holes in the wheels for cooling. I drilled them, then put a twist in the rear holes to act a little like a scoop to help get air in. Don't think the pics show this . Couldnt twist the front the same, the caliper is to close so the hole Straight hole will have to be enough. Every little helps l think. Got to be better than no holes.

When I saw that I thought it an exceptionally good idea. The brakes need air and these drum skins block the cool air. 

As we all like pic's, these are the frames that hold the Oil Coolers on each side. Made from aluminium to help with the weight.

Rusty S posted:

RichardMaxwell posted:

Fpcopo VS posted:

Man this guy can fab!  Look at the holes in the drum skin!

Thanks,

Problem with the drum skins is no air gets past them from the holes in the wheels for cooling. I drilled them, then put a twist in the rear holes to act a little like a scoop to help get air in. Don't think the pics show this . Couldnt twist the front the same, the caliper is to close so the hole Straight hole will have to be enough. Every little helps l think. Got to be better than no holes.

When I saw that I thought it an exceptionally good idea. The brakes need air and these drum skins block the cool air. 

Rusty. I did wonder are the holes in the wheels to let air in or out. I just took it for granted they're to let air in????

 

David Stroud posted:

RichardMaxwell posted:

Ok just to update.

Oil temp was getting to close for comfort. So with the only oil cooler in the DTM, I've now introduced 2 Setrab oil coolers up front and a thermostat. I made the decision to go up front due to little space l have at the back. Not been easy bending all the pipe work etc but happy with the result. 

Just need to prime the lines with oil and test it.  Fingers crossed it should be good now at the higher rpm'??

Will you need bleeders on the high spots of those runs to the front ? 

Shouldnt think so. I've got an 1.5 litre big syringe thing that l used to prime the lines and coolers. The lines and cooler take an additional 2.5 ltrs of oil. Basically disconnected the oil cooler side of the thermostat and connected the syringe to the flow pipe and pump it through until it came out the return pipe. So should think I'll need bleed valves unless you can advise??

 

I don't know if bleeders will be needed or not on your system. They sure were on my radiator system which is up front and had various high spots along the runs each way. Your pressurized syringe system may negate the need and I hope it does. I had no pressurized system to initially feed my cooling system ( gravity fill if you will ) so yours may work just fine from the outset....hope it does. I'm just wondering out loud here I guess. 

"I've got an 1.5 litre big syringe thing"  Ah!.... a Clyster

Hi guys, update.

So now the coolers have been tested all is good. On a cool day Oil temp stays at 180. On a hot day not that we get many over here but the other week we got into the 30 degrees the oil temp only went upto 220 being pushed really hard. So its working well, me thinks.

Head scratcher/question for you guys in the know. This is my dyno graph from last month. I'm struggling to get my head round why the curve dips around 3-4000 rpm. I honestly expected it to be a nice gradual curve.  Any ideas???

Yeah, usually it's smoother than that. I've seen dyno results of other engines occasionally do that and I think it sometimes has to with things like intake and/or exhaust length not being tuned for the combo. It could also be the jetting leaning out or richening up slightly at transition.

The dyno guy said he had seen similar with other engine but couldn't explain why. 

My first thoughts were with you Al. Although the lambda senser said differently. It read about right through the transition from idle to main. So it left me stumped. Exhaust you mentioned to be paired?? I'm using a 1"5/8 BAS header, which for a 2270 is right. This header has a short primaries which are 28" maybe this is the problem?. From memory the A1 has 32" primaries. Anyone know what length tangerine primaries are?? 

A wise man once said 90 per cent of carb problems are ignition.

Are you using an old school, mechanical distributor to control your advance curve? If so, here's a pretty easy shade tree test to see if anything is seriously wrong with the rate and amount of advance. (Keep in mind that many 'electronic' dizzys still use the old mechanical weights and springs to control advance.)

Put a timing mark at TDC on the crank pulley (if there isn't already one there) and watch it under a timing light as you slowly increase revs. You should see some advance starting just above idle, increasing some more up to about 2000, then substantially more above that, reaching max advance by about 3000.

Do you see anything erratic with the movement of the timing mark around where the dip in your power curve occurs? If not, you can probably eliminate this as a source of the problem.

Your likely to be familiar with the Mallory dizzy that I'm using. I'll give your test a go and see. Nothing to loose.

I have that exact distributor in a box. It was FAR worse than an 009. Try swapping it out and see what you get.

Also, your BAS is a nicer header than an A1, and a Tangerine is a Tri-Y, so primaries, etc. are very different.

The midrange section has certainly improved from the earlier test. If there's good numbers on the wideband with no leaning out at transition, Richard, then I don't think it's jetting. You can play with exactly where the main circuits start to take effect with main air jet sizing (and sizing the main fuel appropriately), but you already seem to have that covered.

Can you refresh our memories with engine specs again- you did mention it's a 2270. Cam? heads? compression? It's type 4, right? How old is your Mallory? vacuum as well as mechanical? carbs size? Do you know the volume of the intake ports on the heads and intake manifolds? How tall are the intake manifolds? How tall are the velocity stacks on the carbs? There could be reversion pushing the air-fuel mixture out the carbs at that 3-4,000rpm band- have you watched what happens with the air cleaners off?

Just throwing things out there as I think of them- Al

Sometime around the millennium something happened with Mallory. The Unilite went from being the gold standard to absolute garbage. My purcase fell on the wrong side of the line. 

Also, regarding transition jetting: that's a dyno chart, which means the numbers were generated at WOT (not at partial throttle) even in the lower RPM range. As such, I doubt that this is a transition issue, because the engine is surely on the mains (as the switch fron idles to mains is load, not RPM, dependent) the entire time.

As such, this has to be ignition or something exhaust and/or intake tuning related. Taller velocity stacks would be by far the easiest thing to try.

Thanks for feedback guys, I'll dig out the specs for the engine build and report back. Cheers

Thinking about it Stan, I bought my Mallory this side of the fence also.

Out of interest I've read that lack of back pressure can cause mid range slumps. Anyone had dealings with this?? Reason I'm asking is, went to a track session the other week in the speedster and kept going above the track decibel limit. I'm thinking the Silencer may need repacking as I'm sure the guy who fabbed up the silencer used fibreglass. As you know this stuff doesn't last and l have noticed it getting louder. 

That's true.  Remove the muffler from an original VW sedan and it turned into a gutless wonder - VW engines live for back pressure, so between the short primaries and the lack of proper muffler packing, you might be on to something.

Gordon Nichols posted:

That's true.  Remove the muffler from an original VW sedan and it turned into a gutless wonder - VW engines live for back pressure, so between the short primaries and the lack of proper muffler packing, you might be on to something.

I found something Gordon and I disagree about (it doesn't happen often).

I just categorically disagree with this statement because it defies physics.

Exhaust is something, that like intake can be tuned. A 4/1 header (which is what Richard has here) is tuned by means of primary tube length and diameter, and collector size. Even the positioning of the pipes coming into the collector are clocked so as to follow the firing order and create a swirl through the collector. When things are functioning correctly, the effect is that there is actually suction on the exhaust valve created by the flow of the exhaust through the collector. This effect is strong enough that we can have cams with huge amounts of overlap (the period of time when both the intake and exhaust valves are open at the same time), and not shove exhaust gases out the intake.

There are lots of ways to tune an exhaust, and science to back up the decisions, but most header builders size the collector diameter so that everything that happens afterwards in the exhaust makes no difference. Look at the size of an A1 collector in relation to the size of the primary tubes, and you'll see what I mean.

The stock VW exhaust gives absolutely zero consideration to "extraction", but the muffler is a big 'ol can that actually acts as an expansion chamber so that the engine at least stays running with the minimal overlap of a stock cam. Take off the muffler, and there's not expansion chamber and the engine runs badly. This is why those baloney pipes don't work.

"Back Pressure" is just bad. 

Richard, if this were me, I'd wander over to TheSamba and get in touch with a guy with the screen name of Alstrup (Torbin from Denmark, if memory serves) or a guy with the screen name of Modock (Glen Urban from Colorado).

These guys are have desktop engine configuration software and real-world VW experience that is otherworldly. They were both excellent resources when I was configuring my twin-plug 2276. Glen especially is really into the nuances of intake and exhaust tuning and configuration and can probably tell you in short order what is happening and why. You'll need all the particulars of your engine-- heads, cam, rockers, combustion chamber cc's, deck, exhaust, intake, etc.

What I know is that every 4/1 header has a primary and secondary resonance which acts as the "sweet-spot". There are places where they don't work as well, and I'm guessing your low spot falls in one of them.

When you think about it, engine tuning is just a dance between intake and exhaust tuning-- trying to keep the maximum amount of gasses flowing though the cylinder as possible by means of intake size and length, exhaust configuration, and the opening and closing events of the valves in the cylinders. The deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the cooler it gets.

A good place to start to get your mind blown is a book by a guy named (no kidding) Alexander G. Bell, called 4 Stroke Performance Tuning . Click on it, it's a link to Amazon. WAY better than a book of pretty car pictures.

Good luck. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Stan: well ya know that the whole entire atmosphere is a damn big and proper expansion chamber, so why is running w/ out headers, by your considerations, not like running a stock "big can" muffler?  Aside from the noise, which I bet would be pretty cool . . .

As to your treatise on extraction physics, I am w/ you 100% on all of that.

It's a big can, not an infinite one. There's math here too, but I have no idea what/why because the short answer is: there's something reasonably economical (4/1 header) that works an order of magnitude better, so why waste your time?