Ranger's motorswap thread

#41

Maybe you can fix global warming when you finish. :wink:

#42

Gasman wrote:

Global Warming will be fixed the same way Global Cooling got fixed in the 70’s. It will become increasingly clear that the data doesn’t support the hysteria and eventually the major media will become excited about something different.

Personally, I’d like them to become excited about the 10th Amendment.

Subject change. Per request I’ve created one-stop shopping to some of my oil research last summer.

http://www.gress.org/Home/Cars/TrackTales/DIY/OilingSystem%20Improvements/Oil%20Debate/The%20Great%20Oil%20Debate.htm

#43

Scott, Let me help you out here. We have the same problem with global warming that we have with oiling systems in M20 motors.

#44

Gasman wrote:

Lol, touche’ foushee. Good one.

#45

Gasman wrote:

Holy $hit! Thin oil is killing the polar bears??? That’s it. I’m burning Robinson’s car to the ground. Then I’m throwing paint on his full-length ‘mink’ coat.

Steve D.

#46

I’m the one with the mink…

Al

#47

FARTBREF wrote:

[quote]I’m the one with the mink…

Al[/quote]

Al, I rec’d the starters, that was vy cool of you.

There is this piece of sheetmetal between block and flywheel that the starter bolts thru. Do I really need that piece of sheetmetal?

#48

Ranger wrote:

[quote]Al, I rec’d the starters, that was vy cool of you.

There is this piece of sheetmetal between block and flywheel that the starter bolts thru. Do I really need that piece of sheetmetal?[/quote]
Yes.

#49

Ranger wrote:

A lot of good input has been provided today. B) This dialog has made me decide to log oil pressure with Traqmate - if I ever get it done. I was thinking about location today. The first thing that came to mind was a sandwich plate between the block and the oil filter. Here’s what I didn’t like about it. That one volume is getting pressure input from the pump, potential flow restriction(pressure increase) from the filter(if dirty enough)and potential sudden pressure losses from deployment of the pressure valve. So I talked myself out of that location. The oil cooler could also potentially lend to pressure rises if it collects debris internally or the flow bars get pinched.

Wouldn’t a more appropriate location would be somewhere along the oil galley path inside the block after returning from the oil cooler? Thats as far as I’ve got on it so far. I haven’t had time to identify an appropriate location. Isn’t the OEM pressure transducer located somewhere on the side of the block? If you’re running real gauges, would it compromise the ECU’s functioning if the stock harness no longer recieves an oil pressure input? I don’t think it would. I believe the oil pressure goes straight to the dash and that’s that. Maybe replacing the stock OP sender with a 3 wire one and split the feed to a real pressure gauge and Traqmate (can you successfully split a signal like that?) will work.

I feel there is one more viable explanation for pressure drops in the oil system. Old worn out pump. I know the general concensus is that BMW oil pumps don’t wear out. But worn out is usually identified when it’s too late, as in complete failure or obviously reduced performance. I’m pretty sure before major failure occurs there’s cavitation happening at some point(s) in the rpm band. On track we don’t stay very steady state with the rpms so it would be tricky to catch, just like a momentary slosh denying feed to the oil pick up. These motors aren’t getting any younger. Sooner or later I bet we’ll find that a key component like an oil pump does have a finite life span.

I’m ponying up for a new oil pump. It’s well under $200. I’ll gladly pay that as insurance against having to find another motor, prepare it and then perform the swap. I’ll also be running 20W50. The bearing clearances on our motors is .0012 inches to .0027(.03mm to .07). That’s considered pretty large, hence the 20W50 recommendation by ENGINEERS. :slight_smile: Marketing guys weren’t running things 25 years ago. :wink:

Ranger, you’re a digger. I am too, but man, your shovel’s way bigger than mine. If my buddies at Tar Heel knew about you, they’d never talk about me again. Good job!

#50

I would think you should be able to wire the OP to your TM if you use an electric sender. Take a look at the Traqmate support forums (http://traqmate.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/index.php)on how to calibrate the TM analog channel input to your sender’s voltage. Pretty high on my list too once I upgrade to the new Traqdata II.

#51

jlevie wrote:

[quote]Ranger wrote:

[quote]Al, I rec’d the starters, that was vy cool of you.

There is this piece of sheetmetal between block and flywheel that the starter bolts thru. Do I really need that piece of sheetmetal?[/quote]
Yes.[/quote]

I figured out later that you don’t need to remove the flywheel to remove that piece so I was able to swap it between motors.

I won’t go into too much detail in the comedy of errors committed in assemblying the motor last night because it would be too embarrasing.

  1. The oil pump drive shaft port on the side of the block has a cover on it that is impossible to remove. Therefore one must pull all the stuff off of the front in order to get to the oil pump drive pulley, if one wants to prime the oiling system.

  2. No matter how long you turn the oil pump to prime the oiling system, if you don’t have oil in the block, it won’t work.

  3. Once you do put oil in, if you don’t also put on an oil filter, you’ll have oil everywhere.

  4. Put in the oil pressure sensor too or you’ll have oil everywhere a 2nd time also.

  5. Putting on the intake manifold such that the big bottom vent pipe gets in there is harder with only one set of hands.

Re. oil pressure and Traqmate. The OEM oil pressure “switch” port is below the oil filter port. All it does is trigger a warning light, I think at 7psi. I don’t think that it is connected to the ECU. I replaced my oil pressure switch with a sensor as soon as I got the car. That’s the easy way to add an oil pressure gauge at your dash. Note tho that you have to have an adapter. Most pressure sensors and switches are 1/8 NPT and the port on the block is 12X?.

On my web site there is a doc on the oiling plan. There’s a link right to the doc here in another thread. It indicates the thread of the port on the block. It also shows where I decided to put my pressure sensor “manifold”, which was at the OEM oil pressure switch location. I was conflicted about that.

Oil enters the galley from the oil cooler. In a perfect world you would know the oil pressure into the galley, and also know the oil pressure out of the oil pump. The two are not the same. If/when the oil pump sucks air, it’s output pressure will drop immed, but the pressure at the galley will respond slower. Then when the pump is pushing oil again the galley pressure will go back up, again with a delay. I’ve no idea how long that delay might be. A 1/2sec? 2 secs?

My point is that if you measure oil pressure distant from the oil pump, you won’t be seeing exactly when the oil pump started sucking air.

In my case I’ve complicated things because my Accusump connects to the oiling system just before the galley. And since it is charged with 60psi oil, if I measure oil pressure just before the galley, then I’d know what the bearings were getting, but I wouldn’t know what combo of pump and Accusump supplied the oil.

I connected my oil pressure manifold, containing a sensor and two switches, to the block at the OEM oil pressure port. Mostly because it was easy.

One of the things that has not been stressed enough in the talk about oil is flow. Yesterday I read thru the “one stop oil research” documents that I linked to previously, to make sure that I wasn’t making an ass of myself. Again. One point that became more visible is that the mission of the oil pump is to get oil to the bearings. The oil pump doesn’t really have anything to do with the pressure of the oil in the bearings. The bearing draws the oil in (because of surface tension?) and the hydrostatic wedge becomes presurized until it finds a way out of the bearing. But it’s not the pump that creates that pressure, it’s the action of the bearing on the oil. All the oil pump does is ensure that oil is flowing to the bearing.

When we see our oil pressure drop we immed think that the oil pressure inside of the bearing is dropping too. But apparently that’s the wrong way to look at it. The oil pump just delivers the oil. If the oil pressure in the bearing is low, then it’s low because of flaw(s) in the bearing, likely due to just being worn.

That is the downside of thick oils, at a given temp they don’t flow as well. Thick oils aren’t by nature more protective. Thin oils aren’t by nature less protective. There has to be a design choice of, at operating temp, thin enough to flow yet thick enough to form the wedge in the bearing. And it may well turn out that modern 20W50’s are perfect for our design, I don’t know.

Re. when our cars were designed engineers made decisions, not marketing depts. Hmm. Well, that’s an interesting point and there’s probably some truth in that. I note tho that our neutral front camber OEM alignment spec makes our car an understeering pig, so some compromises were going on.

We all know that most bearing wear occurs at start up. Obviously that’s not an issue for us. But does that mean that very little bearing wear should be occuring? I’m not sure.

One of the interesting points in the BobIsTheOilGuy threads is that once the oil is up to operating temps, a bearing isn’t all that sensitive to viscosity. The oil needs to have good high temp shear, but a couple tribologists were saying that they way the numbers work out, the most important thing is that you have good oil flow. The exact viscosity of the oil, within reason, is less critical. That doesn’t mean that WD40 is a good engine oil, but it might mean that there’s not a helova lot of difference between xW30 and xW40 as long as the high temp shear #'s are in the same ballpark.

The motorsports document made a point that at high rpms, most bearing stress comes from the weight of the moving parts, and occurs at unpredictable places in the 360deg bearing revolution. I think that they were referring to rod bearings only tho. But I would not have expected that the weight of the piston and rod were the most significant sources of stress to the rod bearing.

#52

Ranger wrote:

[quote]
2) No matter how long you turn the oil pump to prime the oiling system, if you don’t have oil in the block, it won’t work.

  1. Once you do put oil in, if you don’t also put on an oil filter, you’ll have oil everywhere.

  2. Put in the oil pressure sensor too or you’ll have oil everywhere a 2nd time also.[/quote]

I wish I had been a fly on the wall. :slight_smile: So…what kind of oil are you priming with?

#53

Ranger wrote:

Wait! Who hijacked Ranger’s login? That ain’t him, for sure. :blink:

[quote]1) The oil pump drive shaft port on the side of the block has a cover on it that is impossible to remove. Therefore one must pull all the stuff off of the front in order to get to the oil pump drive pulley, if one wants to prime the oiling system.

  1. No matter how long you turn the oil pump to prime the oiling system, if you don’t have oil in the block, it won’t work.

  2. Once you do put oil in, if you don’t also put on an oil filter, you’ll have oil everywhere.

  3. Put in the oil pressure sensor too or you’ll have oil everywhere a 2nd time also.

  4. Putting on the intake manifold such that the big bottom vent pipe gets in there is harder with only one set of hands.[/quote]

Never mind. It IS you after all! :laugh:

Steve D.

#54

rrroadster wrote:

[quote]Ranger wrote:

[quote]
2) No matter how long you turn the oil pump to prime the oiling system, if you don’t have oil in the block, it won’t work.

  1. Once you do put oil in, if you don’t also put on an oil filter, you’ll have oil everywhere.

  2. Put in the oil pressure sensor too or you’ll have oil everywhere a 2nd time also.[/quote]

I wish I had been a fly on the wall. :slight_smile: So…what kind of oil are you priming with?[/quote]

Just wait until my wife sees all the oil & oil dry on the garage floor.

Re. type of oil. You guys have made a good case for a heavier grade oil, so I’m going to be a little less aggressive on thinner oils until research indicates otherwise. I’ve a lot of xW30 so I’ll probably mix that with thicker oil, or put in some STP. The engine builder that helped me do the bottom end said that I should break the motor in on dino oil, not synthetics, so I’m using a dino xW30 with some zddp break-in additive. A couple qts of which are on the floor, lol.

#55

To prime the oil system…How bout using the starter motor at its “slow” rpm with the coil disconnected so the engine does not start?

If you really want to insure that the engine has no load on it, remove the plugs and let the oil system and srarter do their thing(s).

Just a thought.

RP

#56

Patton wrote:

[quote]To prime the oil system…How bout using the starter motor at its “slow” rpm with the coil disconnected so the engine does not start?

If you really want to insure that the engine has no load on it, remove the plugs and let the oil system and srarter do their thing(s).

Just a thought.

RP[/quote]

I was under the (maybe mistaken) impression that I was supposed to prime the oil system without moving the crank. Your way would be a helova lot easier.

#57

Scott, Why don’t you take up Karma sutra or something to make the wife happy.

#58

Gasman wrote:

Moving out might be easier. Can you imagine the research Ranger would undertake if the end result was physical pleasure? :wink:

Steve D.

#59

Ranger wrote:

When I did bearings on the junky LeMons car’s motor, I counted on the assembly lube to not destroy the bearings while building oil pressure with the starter. Didn’t pull the plugs, just pulled the coil.

#60

Steve D wrote:

[quote]Gasman wrote:

Moving out might be easier. Can you imagine the research Ranger would undertake if the end result was physical pleasure? :wink:

Steve D.[/quote]

You guys should quit daydreaming about my wife the lawyer chick. It will only make you frustrated. Go take a cold shower or something.