Shortening oil pans

[E30SPDFRK]

I'm thinking about shortening my oil pan and oil pickup tube, but I don't know if it's a good idea or not. I'm looking for actual technical knowledge.

In my eyes, it seems like as long as you keep some of the lower sump and keep the pickup the same distance from the bottom as stock, it will be fine. However, I don't know if the decreased oil capacity would be that big an issue or if the oil will slosh around and cause problems.

I'm not talking a large amount here, about an inch or even a half inch would make me happy.


Does anyone have actual experience or technical knowledge about doing this? I'm not looking for "just raise your engine" or "why not raise the car?" responses, I'm at the limits of what I can do here.

[Sagaris]

If you do, then I would consider shortening your normal oil change interval since there is obviously less oil to share the burden of handling the shear forces of cycling through the engine, heat cycling, and contaminants. Sending the oil out for analysis can help you determine if a normal change interval is still safe.

I would also run an oil temperature gauge and keep a close eye on it since there is less oil to contain the heat.

Perhaps a dry sump system would be more appropriate?

[E30SPDFRK]

A dry sump would be great but it's out of my budget at the moment. Maybe someday.

I agree with the oil change intervals. The V8 holds 8 quarts however and it's usually still pretty clean when I change it at 4k. I would keep an eye on it though.

[Stephen]

just lower the ground

[KVF]

The trick would be to get a spare pan off a beater and see if you could elongate the pan to accommodate whatever you'd loose by shortening. Obviously this could make instal/removal more complicated, but you'd gain your ground clearance and maintain your levels/pressure. You'd have a real money maker with the go low crowd if you can pull this off.

[jlevie]

You can extend the pan to either side, but not forward/aft as there is stuff in the way.

A problem with reducing the pan capacity is the danger of starving the pump if the car is driven at high rpm. A portion, sometimes a good portion, of the oil winds up in the head. With a stock pan and overfilled by a quart I've seen minor oil starvation occur under braking at the end of long straights. The theory is that a bunch of the oil is up in the head. Whats left in the pan sloshes away from the pickup and the pump starves. If an overfull stock pan can have this problem I'd expect it to be worse if the capacity is reduced.

[E30SPDFRK]

Unfortunatly it's about impossible to add width to the V8 pan as it is 2 piece and the lower half isn't very deep. I could see it working with the 1 piece pan crowd though.

Here's a pic of my pan currently. I'd like to about get rid of the step down so the whole pan is level with the front part.