Oil Pump O-ring Mod - Testers NEEDED

[C. Ludwig]

Originally Posted by TitaniumTT

I like the crush washer idea. Have you tried looking @ either GoodRidge or McMaster?

For the next engine I build I think I'm going to take your infered advice and skip the metal gasket, use the o-ring and the teflon piece as well and see how that works out. When this engine comes out in a month or so I'll pull the front cover, see if the 0-ring is still there. If not, replace the cover sans gasket and see if the oil pressures are any different.

I do disagree that this is not worth it for a street car. In my opinion this would be better for a street car than a race car becuase of the idle oil pressures. I would like to see oil presure @ idle consistantly be above 25psi to keep the jets in the e-shaft opened at all times. This promotes cooling of the internals more during extended idle periods which a street car sees more than a race car. Just my $.02 though.

I looked through McMaster online. Nothing was ideal. I tried some aluminum washers they had that I thought would be a good thickness. They were too large on the OD so I worked them over with the sanding wheel. I just tried it in a mock up and it ended up being too thick and didn't "crush" at all. Thick enough it propped the cover up off the iron. Copper might be soft enough to work in a similar thickness but I never revisited the issue. There has to be something out there that would work, it's just finding it.

Don't do the S5+ cover/iron without a gasket. What I was trying to explain is that if you do this the teflon will be squeezed enough to guarantee the o-ring is pushed into the oil passage. You can mock one up and try to see. Alternately, I would like to try another engine with just the teflon piece as a crush washer and no gasket but I haven't built an engine for myself in some time that I can experiment with.

Another idea I have had regarding the front cover o-ring is to machine the pieces for a dowel. Would work just like the rotor housing to iron joint. The dowel would support the o-ring and pretty much eliminate the chance of a blow out. Again, I've never really had an issue though with the parts properly assembled so it's never been followed through.

If you want the jets open at all times remove the check ball and replace the jet with the Weber jet or the Mazda comp jets. Easy enough. I've used the comp jets in a number of IT engines and never have any issues.