Thought this would be worth sharing. I have an s50 in my e30. Using the e34 oil pan with achilles baffle welded in. I was having a lot of oil pressure drops all over The Ridge. In an effort to improve the situation and avoid doing something like accusump I installed a windage tray (my engine didn't come with one when I bought it 18 years ago) and an IJ crank scraper (teflon version).
Results are pretty good. I have annotated the "before" data log with roughly where on the track it is. I think the cliff notes are:
1. Oil pressure is higher through all corners and no longer really drops under 20psi.
2. Some areas like the turn in to 1 (turn in happens around 100mph or so and is gentle) I used to temporarily drop to 20psi. There is now no oil pressure drop.
3. Turn 2-4 I'd drop between 20-30psi but now stay over 40.
4. Turn 5 I had a large oil pressure drop on turn in down to 20psi. This one was concerning because I am on throttle and high RPM. That is now totally gone.
5. Turn 6 oil pressure has gone from mid 20's to mid 30's.
6. Still get a pressure drop off throttle going into 8. This is a big downhill into a very sharp turn. But staying over 20psi.
7. Pressure on back side of the track generally better. Pressure stays over 20psi.
8. Overall there is a lot less noise in the data. Likely less air in the oil. The before graph has a lot of very erratic lines when the engine doesn't have perfect pressure and the lines are overall much smoother now.
Worth noting for completeness that the before was using 20w50 conventional and the after is using 15w50 synthetic. But oil temps have not gone over 230 on either and the conventional was used for 4 track days (graph is probably from track day #2 or #3) so I think the oil was totally fine. Car has 7.5qts of oil in both cases (1qt overfill).
I still might put in a more hardcore baffled pan at some point but I feel a lot better about these numbers and the overall stability of the oil pressure. It seems like the primary thing causing big drops at this point is hard braking zones temporarily spiking pressure and hard turn in. Both of these I am off throttle and pressure recovers fast. These modifications completely solved oil pressures drops in some places and are generally resulting in higher pressure across the board through big turns etc.
On the graph the GP RPM Limit 1 is an oil-pressure based safety. When it activates and goes up 3 vertical axis that means it is triggered because oil pressure got too low but isn't actively cutting the engine. After 1 second it will start cutting engine power and goes up to the 4th line (I forget if it starts pulling timing or what, too lazy to look). You can see a lot of places where it starts arming itself in the first graph and it starts cutting power in a few places. On the second graph is still arms itself a couple times (pressure just barely dips under 20psi for a split second) but is armed for much less time and never cuts power.
Results are pretty good. I have annotated the "before" data log with roughly where on the track it is. I think the cliff notes are:
1. Oil pressure is higher through all corners and no longer really drops under 20psi.
2. Some areas like the turn in to 1 (turn in happens around 100mph or so and is gentle) I used to temporarily drop to 20psi. There is now no oil pressure drop.
3. Turn 2-4 I'd drop between 20-30psi but now stay over 40.
4. Turn 5 I had a large oil pressure drop on turn in down to 20psi. This one was concerning because I am on throttle and high RPM. That is now totally gone.
5. Turn 6 oil pressure has gone from mid 20's to mid 30's.
6. Still get a pressure drop off throttle going into 8. This is a big downhill into a very sharp turn. But staying over 20psi.
7. Pressure on back side of the track generally better. Pressure stays over 20psi.
8. Overall there is a lot less noise in the data. Likely less air in the oil. The before graph has a lot of very erratic lines when the engine doesn't have perfect pressure and the lines are overall much smoother now.
Worth noting for completeness that the before was using 20w50 conventional and the after is using 15w50 synthetic. But oil temps have not gone over 230 on either and the conventional was used for 4 track days (graph is probably from track day #2 or #3) so I think the oil was totally fine. Car has 7.5qts of oil in both cases (1qt overfill).
I still might put in a more hardcore baffled pan at some point but I feel a lot better about these numbers and the overall stability of the oil pressure. It seems like the primary thing causing big drops at this point is hard braking zones temporarily spiking pressure and hard turn in. Both of these I am off throttle and pressure recovers fast. These modifications completely solved oil pressures drops in some places and are generally resulting in higher pressure across the board through big turns etc.
On the graph the GP RPM Limit 1 is an oil-pressure based safety. When it activates and goes up 3 vertical axis that means it is triggered because oil pressure got too low but isn't actively cutting the engine. After 1 second it will start cutting engine power and goes up to the 4th line (I forget if it starts pulling timing or what, too lazy to look). You can see a lot of places where it starts arming itself in the first graph and it starts cutting power in a few places. On the second graph is still arms itself a couple times (pressure just barely dips under 20psi for a split second) but is armed for much less time and never cuts power.
Attached Files