Who is using an oil deflector under the intake?
How hot does the oil get, and how is it cooled?
200*’s-ish
It doesn’t get cooled unless you have an external oil cooler.
That valley cover is a pretty big radiator plate.
If you run that tin-deflector, all the oil being flung around gets rerouted to the pan, straight down,onto the spinning crank which will probably whip it up like Smokey Yunich says; into a writhing monster (or something like that),
No it is not a radiator plate. It gets hot like the rest of the engine cats hot. No effect.
The oil follows the same path regardless, re-routed?Hardly! It will follow the same path it always does, so your theory of the plate costing HP is moot.
which ends up , you guessed it, slowed down in the windage tray getting beat up, and heated up, and in the end costing horsepower.
IMO,the trick is to get the oil back to the pan, past the crank or past the ends of it.Sometimes you have to lose a few ponies to gain a few.
It shouldn’t cost you any HP!
The plate was designed as a part that prevents the hot oil (200*’s-ish) from heating the intake which in the past and sometimes even now has exposed runners.
The plate is a quick fix to keep the runners cool.
Also, from a serious racing mod as seen here on FABO where the valley has the exposed cam area covered and/or epoxied to stop oil from spilling onto the cam and crank.
The plate doesn’t add to it.
Running a air gap styled intake, RPM or other like divided runners from valley cover plate like a M1 single plane helps keep the runners cooler.
The real trick is incoming air & fuel. It is what is inside the intake that makes the power. Cool air and fuel into a hot intake makes less power than old air and fuel into a cold intake. Anywhere you can cut heat to the intake, inside and out is a plus.
Oil control should ideally send the oil from top to bottom without coming in contact with the cam and rotating assembly.
The windage tray doesn’t trap oil. If your volume of oil is so great from the crank alone, I know that is an issue! The windage tray should have openings large enough to allow the oil out at a rate where you and a buddy could dump 2+ gallons of oil into the tray and it would just run through it in a blink of an eye or faster. If this is not the case, your windage tray is inadequate and needs to be modified or swapped out for a superior unit.
Of course without getting deep, there are very deep pans where when does tray is not needed or a dry sump system.