|
Oil strainer information. An area of extreme importance. The inlet or suction side of any pump is extremely limited in what it can do as compared to the pressure side and should never be impaired in anyway, whereas the pressure side is capable of overcoming a great deal of extra resistance. For that reason, I have not used the stock oil strainer in any of my high performance street or race engines since 1966. I found that it often caused too much restriction on the suction side of the oil pump with a little higher performance and high RPM engines. This problem was traced to oil starvation and all out bearing and/or crankshaft failures from the oil not being able to pass through the stock restrictive oil strainer screen fast enough to provide adequate flow to the pump. Contamination was a concern, however, all of my engines from 1961-on had full flow oil filters protecting the engine. Some concern about metal particles going into the oil pump before filtering was solved when I went to the farm supply house and bought a "cow" magnet that is about 1/2" round by 3" long. I hose clamped it on the outside of the pickup tube extension for the larger sump. I have used this configuration successfully for years over 30 years. For those that do not know, a cow magnet is what they feed the cows to pick up metal (such as broken barbed wire) from the stomach and pass it out of their system. Another concern is the weight of the oil. Remember, the heavier the oil, the less it lubricates. We run 20 weight in our race engines and 10-30 weight in all street engines. Only if the temperature is constantly above 80-85 degrees would I consider 10-40 weight. 5-30 should be used when temperature falls to below 45 degrees. For freezing temperatures straight 10 weight would be my choice. The point is, if bearing life is substandard or failures have occurred, these are items you should be looking at: GB 212 Pickup tube magnet with clamp to attach to outside of deep sump pickup tube. Originated by Gene Berg in 1964.
|
