Any one interested in the oiling mods I did?

[gregcon]

In some of the past replies, we can see that 'Chrysler' (whatever that is) has two very different and conflicting responses.

If in fact the oil doesn't like to turn the corner to #4, then anything you do to aid that situation would be helpful. In this case, smoothing the entry of the passage to the galley would do just that. So on one hand the oil doesn't want to make a sharp turn and on the other hand it also doesn't respond to a less-sharp turn. Nonsensical.

The kernel of truth in all that is simple - the oil doesn't mind making a turn because it has to - it's under a lot of pressure. More, as YR noted, the size of the passage is in excess of the size needed to satisfy the bearing leakage rate. So, the oil isn't really seeing a high flow 'shear' situation when it turns....it's just going where it's forced to go. Looking at it another way, the passage is 1/4" diameter and the oil is freely turning and flowing down the imaginary 1/8 passage that exists right down the center of the 1/4" passage. There's even a nice gentle radius there, you just can't see it.

That said, if the 1/4" passage is plenty big enough...why are we enlarging them to 5/16? Just to be damn sure?

 

[rumblefish360]

How much oil will a 1/4 - 5/16 Passage flow under 60psi?
How much oil bleeds out from the bearings in question?
At what pressure can we call it enough to be safe at the bearing?

I can’t see how a radius flow path is bad or non helpful.

 

[yellow rose]

How much oil will a 1/4 - 5/16 Passage flow under 60psi?
How much oil bleeds out from the bearings in question?
At what pressure can we call it enough to be safe at the bearing?

I can’t see how a radius flow path is bad or non helpful.

The .250-.312 passage will feed a ton more oil than what the bearings require. I fed mine with a number 4 hose, and that’s .250 or so. And that was plenty. Probably could have done it number 3 lines.

 

[gregcon]

Rumblefish, your questions are all good but no one knows. lol. Well, someone knows but.....

The funny thing about oil pressure is the more you provide, the more you leak.

Although I will be running a HV oil pump on my R3 engine, I have put together lots and lots of engines with standard volume pumps running standard pressures....nothing 'higher' than stock. And with stock volume pans. What I have done is restrict oil in some places and ensured the oil passages - all of them - are smooth and generous right up to the point of restriction. I want the orifice I installed limiting the oil, no place else. I'm also a big believer in baffling where needed, and in crank scrapers and one-way, Teflon coated windage screens, I don't believe in windage trays.

 

[yellow rose]

Rumblefish, your questions are all good but no one knows. lol. Well, someone knows but.....

The funny thing about oil pressure is the more you provide, the more you leak.

Although I will be running a HV oil pump on my R3 engine, I have put together lots and lots of engines with standard volume pumps running standard pressures....nothing 'higher' than stock. And with stock volume pans. What I have done is restrict oil in some places and ensured the oil passages - all of them - are smooth and generous right up to the point of restriction. I want the orifice I installed limiting the oil, no place else. I'm also a big believer in baffling where needed, and in crank scrapers and one-way, Teflon coated windage screens, I don't believe in windage trays.

I forgot to mention I think it’s a bit strange that Chrysler didn’t put some kind of oil to the lifter bores for push rod oiling on the R3 block. That’s weird.

That little hole you used should be plenty to oil pushrods.

 

[gregcon]

In one of the SBM books they claim the blocks that were made later, with the 'AC' designation, had holes on the bores. I don't know if that's true or not. But I'm glad mine had none as they say 1/8" holes which would be too big anyway.

The guys who have done lots of W headed engines with pushrod oiling claim it's hard to not over-oil the top end. They also have drain lines running down the outside of the head to the pan to return oil....without them, the W head will hold a lot of oil before it reaches a level that it can drain back through the lifter valley.

If you think about it, the R3 block as shipped will send oil from the #1 main to the the left side galley then the oil does nothing except sit there.

 

[Duane]

You can make a test fixture to see the issue. A clear piece of tubing...1/2 inch will do and I’d use 2 or 3 tubes tied into the main tube so it looks just like how the main bearing feeds go into the main oil gallery. You’d need to restrict the down tubes a bit...maybe .312 max but I use .287 but something in that size.

Two small pumps, each one plumbed to an end of the 1/2 inch tube with regulators on them and something the fluid can discharge into.

You could use water. That’s cheap, easy and safe. With two separate small tanks, you could use food cooling in one tank to make it easier to see which column is doing what.

Then just turn it on and watch what the fluid does. What happened when both columns have the same pressure (I forgot to mention you need pressure gauges on both sides to see what the pressures are) and what happens when one column has more pressure than the other.

You can have pressure and no flow (or close to zero flow) with any fluid system. I learned it trying to run 5/8 fuel lines from the pump to the regulators. The weight of the fuel in the bigger line would literally stall at the launch. But I still had pressure at the gauge. I ended up with 3 gauges in the system. It was hard to watch them all at the same time, but you could see the pressure never change. But it went lean at the hit.

With a 5/8 fuel line from the pump it took about 35 psi of line pressure to stop that. That’s when we developed the bypass system. When all the smart people looked at it, they laughed. I’m betting most of them now use a bypass system of some sort.

Also, I’m not sure I understand your brake system analogy. Where in the brake system to you have to columns of fluid coming at each other. I can’t picture that in head.

And I agree there is more than one way to skin a cat and they can all work. If you can get oil to the rods at 8500 without correcting the oil timing then that’s all that matters. As long as the carnage stops it doesn’t matter how you do it.

I am using a brake system as an example because it is a pressure system with no loss of fluid and no leakage. When you push the master cylinder you get a few cc of fluid movement through the system to move the brake pads. After they make contact you are building pressure because there is no place for the fluid to go, so in this system you have pressure with no leakage or flow.
An engine is not like that. Although it has pressure, because there are leakage points, you will always have flow to those leakage points. You have pressure because the volume coming in exceeds the leakage going out. In our example of oil velocity running past number four main in a stock system, occurs because there are too many leakage points beyond the first main bearing we need to feed.
Number four main is starved because there is not enough other restrictions to force the oil to go there. Front oiling imho would have two opposing pressurized columns canceling out much of the flow in the galley.
Because it is under pressure from both ends, that pressurized oil has the main bearing passages as its only place to escape.
Put another way, in the sealed brake system, if you blew a line while the system was pressurized, that would be the first place the fluid would leak from.

 

[Duane]

Flow occurs only because of pressure. No pressure, no flow. A glass of water has lots of flow potential, but no pressure, so it just sits there.

If you pressurize the galley, the resultant pressure causes the oil to flow into all the passages and cracks we want it to go to. If you pressurize it from both ends, it still will go into those areas but the pressure is better supported and presumably more even across the galley.

This concept is very common and popular in EFI fuel systems. A good system running 45-60PSI won't have the last injector hanging out at the end of the line....it is plumbed in a loop so that there is no end of line injector.

We want oil flow in the oil passages that feed off the galley. The galley serves as a manifold, or distribution block, if you will. The flow in the galley is only a byproduct of the fact that when oil exits the passages, it has to be replaced by more oil. A big galley feeding smaller sized passages is what we want - and it's what we have, more or less. The better supported the pressure is in the galley, the better we can assure good oil flow down the passages. A double-end fed galley will have a better supported pressure, all else being equal.

I agree with this post except the part about the oil will flow to all the places we want it to go. It will, but not nessessarily in the volumes that we want. To get that we must start steering the oil with restrictions or diversions. The rest I agree 100%.

 

[Duane]

In some of the past replies, we can see that 'Chrysler' (whatever that is) has two very different and conflicting responses.

If in fact the oil doesn't like to turn the corner to #4, then anything you do to aid that situation would be helpful. In this case, smoothing the entry of the passage to the galley would do just that. So on one hand the oil doesn't want to make a sharp turn and on the other hand it also doesn't respond to a less-sharp turn. Nonsensical.

The kernel of truth in all that is simple - the oil doesn't mind making a turn because it has to - it's under a lot of pressure. More, as YR noted, the size of the passage is in excess of the size needed to satisfy the bearing leakage rate. So, the oil isn't really seeing a high flow 'shear' situation when it turns....it's just going where it's forced to go. Looking at it another way, the passage is 1/4" diameter and the oil is freely turning and flowing down the imaginary 1/8 passage that exists right down the center of the 1/4" passage. There's even a nice gentle radius there, you just can't see it.

That said, if the 1/4" passage is plenty big enough...why are we enlarging them to 5/16? Just to be damn sure?

Nonsensical because you are still focused on pressure instead of speed.
Why would enlarging and smoothing the rear block passages aid the flow of oil to number four main?
Once the oil gets from the pump to the galley, it is on the freeway!
The galley is steering the oil, not the passages in the back of the block. Opening the passages in the pump and in the back of the block is to reduce pumping losses as far I know.

 

[gregcon]

I asked one of the engineers at my company who has plenty of years in such matters. He looked at my sketch and told me:

1) Double end feed is better if you can do it.
2) There is no such effect as two columns of oil 'smashing' into each other. Fluid is....fluid.
3) Oil flow as shown is a pressure function. If you are able to show 50/55/60 PSI in a manifold (or whatever number you like) the flow is a direct function of that pressure. Only when you fail to maintain that pressure will flow begin to suffer.
4) As long as the surface area (diameter) of the manifold is about 2X the surface area of the sum of the branches, you will see very little pressure drop from branch to branch, no matter which two branches you are comparing.

He told me he did hundreds of flow tests on a similar manifold with 6 branches and the pressure drop between any two branches would be very tiny, like .01PSI, as long as the manifold were sufficiently big. These tests were done using very sensitive meters and were 'certified' for aerospace use. In other words, very accurate and calibrated.

He said the flow between branches in the above example would be the same 'because it had no reason to vary'.

So...if that's all true...the galley is .531" dia which equals .2214 sq in. The factory 1/4" passages, times four, equal .196 sq in.

That tells us the galley is undersized. What's worse, if we enlarge the passages to 5/16", our sum goes to .305 sq in. which exceeds the 'capacity' of the galley itself.

Of course, our lifter bleeds are only making matters worse.

Double feeding the undersized galley becomes all the more beneficial.

What we need is a bigger galley.....maybe feed two mains off the left side and two off the right?

This assumes the passages are unobstructed, which of course they are not (we think) because the crank/cam act as a partial blockage.

 

[Duane]

View attachment 1715562818 I asked one of the engineers at my company who has plenty of years in such matters. He looked at my sketch and told me:

1) Double end feed is better if you can do it.
2) There is no such effect as two columns of oil 'smashing' into each other. Fluid is....fluid.
3) Oil flow as shown is a pressure function. If you are able to show 50/55/60 PSI in a manifold (or whatever number you like) the flow is a direct function of that pressure. Only when you fail to maintain that pressure will flow begin to suffer.
4) As long as the surface area (diameter) of the manifold is about 2X the surface area of the sum of the branches, you will see very little pressure drop from branch to branch, no matter which two branches you are comparing.

He told me he did hundreds of flow tests on a similar manifold with 6 branches and the pressure drop between any two branches would be very tiny, like .01PSI, as long as the manifold were sufficiently big. These tests were done using very sensitive meters and were 'certified' for aerospace use. In other words, very accurate and calibrated.

He said the flow between branches in the above example would be the same 'because it had no reason to vary'.

So...if that's all true...the galley is .531" dia which equals .2214 sq in. The factory 1/4" passages, times four, equal .196 sq in.

That tells us the galley is undersized. What's worse, if we enlarge the passages to 5/16", our sum goes to .305 sq in. which exceeds the 'capacity' of the galley itself.

Of course, our lifter bleeds are only making matters worse.

Double feeding the undersized galley becomes all the more beneficial.

What we need is a bigger galley.....maybe feed two mains off the left side and two off the right?

This assumes the passages are unobstructed, which of course they are not (we think) because the crank/cam act as a partial blockage.

Can you post a pic of your drawing that you supplied?

 

[Duane]

View attachment 1715562818 I asked one of the engineers at my company who has plenty of years in such matters. He looked at my sketch and told me:

1) Double end feed is better if you can do it.
2) There is no such effect as two columns of oil 'smashing' into each other. Fluid is....fluid.
3) Oil flow as shown is a pressure function. If you are able to show 50/55/60 PSI in a manifold (or whatever number you like) the flow is a direct function of that pressure. Only when you fail to maintain that pressure will flow begin to suffer.
4) As long as the surface area (diameter) of the manifold is about 2X the surface area of the sum of the branches, you will see very little pressure drop from branch to branch, no matter which two branches you are comparing.

He told me he did hundreds of flow tests on a similar manifold with 6 branches and the pressure drop between any two branches would be very tiny, like .01PSI, as long as the manifold were sufficiently big. These tests were done using very sensitive meters and were 'certified' for aerospace use. In other words, very accurate and calibrated.

He said the flow between branches in the above example would be the same 'because it had no reason to vary'.

So...if that's all true...the galley is .531" dia which equals .2214 sq in. The factory 1/4" passages, times four, equal .196 sq in.

That tells us the galley is undersized. What's worse, if we enlarge the passages to 5/16", our sum goes to .305 sq in. which exceeds the 'capacity' of the galley itself.

Of course, our lifter bleeds are only making matters worse.

Double feeding the undersized galley becomes all the more beneficial.

What we need is a bigger galley.....maybe feed two mains off the left side and two off the right?

This assumes the passages are unobstructed, which of course they are not (we think) because the crank/cam act as a partial blockage.

And the reason two supplies are better is because each is only feeding two passages for the same surface area, so then the galley size is fine. That's also why my X block and your R block come equipped with a boss for adding a front oil feed.

 

[gregcon]

I added it.

I should clarify - he said if the manifold is big enough, and you have a pump big enough to maintain the PSI, he didn't care if the manifold was single or double end fed...the pressure drop would be tiny. But, if the manifold is not big enough, the double end feed helps compensate.

 

[gregcon]

I think most people who front feed an X/R block are not rear feeding it also. I have never seen one, anyway.

 

[Duane]

I think most people who front feed an X/R block are not rear feeding it also. I have never seen one, anyway.

The only guys I can think of who have a front oil engine without a rear feed would be guys using a dry sump system.

 

[Duane]

I added it.

I should clarify - he said if the manifold is big enough, and you have a pump big enough to maintain the PSI, he didn't care if the manifold was single or double end fed...the pressure drop would be tiny. But, if the manifold is not big enough, the double end feed helps compensate.

That's why I want to see the sketch you gave him.

 

[Duane]

View attachment 1715562818 I asked one of the engineers at my company who has plenty of years in such matters. He looked at my sketch and told me:

1) Double end feed is better if you can do it.
2) There is no such effect as two columns of oil 'smashing' into each other. Fluid is....fluid.
3) Oil flow as shown is a pressure function. If you are able to show 50/55/60 PSI in a manifold (or whatever number you like) the flow is a direct function of that pressure. Only when you fail to maintain that pressure will flow begin to suffer.
4) As long as the surface area (diameter) of the manifold is about 2X the surface area of the sum of the branches, you will see very little pressure drop from branch to branch, no matter which two branches you are comparing.

He told me he did hundreds of flow tests on a similar manifold with 6 branches and the pressure drop between any two branches would be very tiny, like .01PSI, as long as the manifold were sufficiently big. These tests were done using very sensitive meters and were 'certified' for aerospace use. In other words, very accurate and calibrated.

He said the flow between branches in the above example would be the same 'because it had no reason to vary'.

So...if that's all true...the galley is .531" dia which equals .2214 sq in. The factory 1/4" passages, times four, equal .196 sq in.

That tells us the galley is undersized. What's worse, if we enlarge the passages to 5/16", our sum goes to .305 sq in. which exceeds the 'capacity' of the galley itself.

Of course, our lifter bleeds are only making matters worse.

Double feeding the undersized galley becomes all the more beneficial.

What we need is a bigger galley.....maybe feed two mains off the left side and two off the right?

This assumes the passages are unobstructed, which of course they are not (we think) because the crank/cam act as a partial blockage.

Ok so we have a sketch that shows a modified oil system just like Chrysler recommends. Your drawing does not show the galley feeding 8 lifters on the drivers side, all fed from number 1 main, does not show 8 lifters fed on the passenger side, does not show
Cam bearings or rockers being fed.
But if the drawing you gave has the engineers blessing that it would supply all four mains evenly, I would agree. Just as Chrysler say, tube the block, front oil is a bonus.

 

[Duane]

In some of the past replies, we can see that 'Chrysler' (whatever that is) has two very different and conflicting responses.

If in fact the oil doesn't like to turn the corner to #4, then anything you do to aid that situation would be helpful. In this case, smoothing the entry of the passage to the galley would do just that. So on one hand the oil doesn't want to make a sharp turn and on the other hand it also doesn't respond to a less-sharp turn. Nonsensical.

The kernel of truth in all that is simple - the oil doesn't mind making a turn because it has to - it's under a lot of pressure. More, as YR noted, the size of the passage is in excess of the size needed to satisfy the bearing leakage rate. So, the oil isn't really seeing a high flow 'shear' situation when it turns....it's just going where it's forced to go. Looking at it another way, the passage is 1/4" diameter and the oil is freely turning and flowing down the imaginary 1/8 passage that exists right down the center of the 1/4" passage. There's even a nice gentle radius there, you just can't see it.

That said, if the 1/4" passage is plenty big enough...why are we enlarging them to 5/16? Just to be damn sure?

Those bearings are also feeding two rod bearings each and some cam bearings, not just the main itself. If you are using full groove mains, you are increasing the volume of oil that feeds the rod bearings as well.

 

[gregcon]

Those bearings are also feeding two rod bearings each and some cam bearings, not just the main itself. If you are using full groove mains, you are increasing the volume of oil that feeds the rod bearings as well.

The sketch doesnt show the lifters or cam bearings as they are of no consequence to the issue of flow difference across branches.

Most high end SBM engines I see use a dry sump or belt driven external pump.

 

[yellow rose]

In one of the SBM books they claim the blocks that were made later, with the 'AC' designation, had holes on the bores. I don't know if that's true or not. But I'm glad mine had none as they say 1/8" holes which would be too big anyway.

The guys who have done lots of W headed engines with pushrod oiling claim it's hard to not over-oil the top end. They also have drain lines running down the outside of the head to the pan to return oil....without them, the W head will hold a lot of oil before it reaches a level that it can drain back through the lifter valley.

If you think about it, the R3 block as shipped will send oil from the #1 main to the the left side galley then the oil does nothing except sit there.

Yep. That’s why I’d plug that under the main bearing with a set screw. No need for all that oil going up there and any trash that goes with it gets up there and will come out at just the perfectly wrong time.

 

[yellow rose]

I am using a brake system as an example because it is a pressure system with no loss of fluid and no leakage. When you push the master cylinder you get a few cc of fluid movement through the system to move the brake pads. After they make contact you are building pressure because there is no place for the fluid to go, so in this system you have pressure with no leakage or flow.
An engine is not like that. Although it has pressure, because there are leakage points, you will always have flow to those leakage points. You have pressure because the volume coming in exceeds the leakage going out. In our example of oil velocity running past number four main in a stock system, occurs because there are too many leakage points beyond the first main bearing we need to feed.
Number four main is starved because there is not enough other restrictions to force the oil to go there. Front oiling imho would have two opposing pressurized columns canceling out much of the flow in the galley.
Because it is under pressure from both ends, that pressurized oil has the main bearing passages as its only place to escape.
Put another way, in the sealed brake system, if you blew a line while the system was pressurized, that would be the first place the fluid would leak from.

I get what your saying. My issue is I never failed the 5-6 rod bearings, and I’ve never seen anyone else. It’s always the 3-4 rods. In fact, my first 2 X block came real cheap because he kicked the 3-4 rods off both and quit racing over it. I offered to have him send them to me, and I’d fix the issues but he was done. His loss, my gain. A couple of sleeves and they went into service.

So that can’t be a velocity issue. If you’ve ever seen say...a long string of sprinklers in a field, like 30 or so where you get look at the system filling up, you’ll see the last 2 or 3 sprinkler heads and the first 20 or so will all be at full load while those at the far end that are 3-5 are the very last to get to full flow. Once they are all flowing, the nozzle is the limit. Pretty much what happens in an oiling system.

 

[yellow rose]

View attachment 1715562818 I asked one of the engineers at my company who has plenty of years in such matters. He looked at my sketch and told me:

1) Double end feed is better if you can do it.
2) There is no such effect as two columns of oil 'smashing' into each other. Fluid is....fluid.
3) Oil flow as shown is a pressure function. If you are able to show 50/55/60 PSI in a manifold (or whatever number you like) the flow is a direct function of that pressure. Only when you fail to maintain that pressure will flow begin to suffer.
4) As long as the surface area (diameter) of the manifold is about 2X the surface area of the sum of the branches, you will see very little pressure drop from branch to branch, no matter which two branches you are comparing.

He told me he did hundreds of flow tests on a similar manifold with 6 branches and the pressure drop between any two branches would be very tiny, like .01PSI, as long as the manifold were sufficiently big. These tests were done using very sensitive meters and were 'certified' for aerospace use. In other words, very accurate and calibrated.

He said the flow between branches in the above example would be the same 'because it had no reason to vary'.

So...if that's all true...the galley is .531" dia which equals .2214 sq in. The factory 1/4" passages, times four, equal .196 sq in.

That tells us the galley is undersized. What's worse, if we enlarge the passages to 5/16", our sum goes to .305 sq in. which exceeds the 'capacity' of the galley itself.

Of course, our lifter bleeds are only making matters worse.

Double feeding the undersized galley becomes all the more beneficial.

What we need is a bigger galley.....maybe feed two mains off the left side and two off the right?

This assumes the passages are unobstructed, which of course they are not (we think) because the crank/cam act as a partial blockage.

Ask your engineer about two columns of fluid in the same manifold at different pressures please.

The assumption that what pressure you see on the gauge is what’s in the manifold (gallery) and it damn sure isn’t.

Whichever feed has the least amount of restriction will try to overcome the other.

Ive never seen anyone front and rear feed a block. That would be redundant, which is what happened to me when I pulled the plugs out of the main feeds. I had oil coming in from the bottom and in from the main oil gallery and you couldn’t a rod bearing in it. At times it will be easier for the oil to NOT go to the bearings and back up another route.

Running two fluid columns is bad IMHO.

 

[Duane]

The sketch doesnt show the lifters or cam bearings as they are of no consequence to the issue of flow difference across branches.

Most high end SBM engines I see use a dry sump or belt driven external pump.

I ran a grooved journal camshaft in my last engine. I did not restrict oil going to the rockers. This failed the 2&4 main bearings.
The other aspects of the engine effect the others. Too much of the main feed oil went to the heads. I do not know how to get it across to you that just because you have pressure, does not mean all components have the necessary volume to function properly.
The drawing you posted will work because it is drastically simplified.
It is not a drawing of a real engine oiling system.

 

[Duane]

Ask your engineer about two columns of fluid in the same manifold at different pressures please.

The assumption that what pressure you see on the gauge is what’s in the manifold (gallery) and it damn sure isn’t.

Whichever feed has the least amount of restriction will try to overcome the other.

Ive never seen anyone front and rear feed a block. That would be redundant, which is what happened to me when I pulled the plugs out of the main feeds. I had oil coming in from the bottom and in from the main oil gallery and you couldn’t a rod bearing in it. At times it will be easier for the oil to NOT go to the bearings and back up another route.

Running two fluid columns is bad IMHO.

I agree that gauge pressure and galley pressure may not match, but why would two identical opposing columns of oil from the same source not have the same pressure?

 

[Duane]

Ask your engineer about two columns of fluid in the same manifold at different pressures please.

The assumption that what pressure you see on the gauge is what’s in the manifold (gallery) and it damn sure isn’t.

Whichever feed has the least amount of restriction will try to overcome the other.

Ive never seen anyone front and rear feed a block. That would be redundant, which is what happened to me when I pulled the plugs out of the main feeds. I had oil coming in from the bottom and in from the main oil gallery and you couldn’t a rod bearing in it. At times it will be easier for the oil to NOT go to the bearings and back up another route.

Running two fluid columns is bad IMHO.

He has not yet understood that restriction can alter the flow or the pressure. We are right back to my transmission example.
Someone explain how the Chrysler boost valve works to boost pressure above the trans system pressure.