Reply to "351C Oiling problems"

A good std pump, proper bearing clearances, a 10-qt PROPERLY DESIGNED oil pan (some are simple oil-buckets with a single drag-race baffle), and high quality oil, synthetic if you run very fast very long. A stock Pantera can corner hard enough to slosh oil away from the pump pickup, starving the bearings. The Accusump works in severe low-speed cornering to supplement oil supplied from the pan. They canalso be set up as pre-oiliers to reducecstart-up wear. Autocrossers & amateur racers like them but they do not replace a good big race pan on a Pantera. You have covered the main weak spots, except for the roll pin in the distributor drive gear. The oil pump is actually driven by the distributor gear, and the stock gearotor pump often overloads the pin. Either double-pin the gear, or drill it out & use a steel drill rod as a pin. This includes aftermarket distributors, incidently. Oil coolers in street Panteras are un-needed under about 140mph for more than about 5 minutes at constant speed, or pro roadracing. Air-cooled oil heat exchangers are useless unless one cuts the body to duct lots of air. Fluidyne, Aeroquip and Setrab all make water-to-oil coolers that have been verified to work. But they depend on a really good water radiator, not the stock one. The current favorite in the U.S is an aluminum Fluidyne radiator. With this in place & a water-to-oil cooler, oil temps maintain at around 245-255 while water temps increase to 215-225, at a continuous 160+ mph for 15-30 minutes in 5th gear. An oil company ran tests a while ago, in which not just the oil pan but also the main bearings were instrumented. They found that in the main journals, oil temps were an average of 100 HOTTER than the oil in the sump. Synthetic oil gives another 20-25 degrees F of disaster-protection after all the mechanical components are right. Finally, remember, the stock oil pressure gauge lies. Add a cheap MECHANICAL gauge to a tee fitting on the rear of the block so you can use the stock one also, & verify that your engine gives 65-75 psi, hot, at above 2500 rpms & maybe 25-30 psi at idle.