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Original Message
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| Replace the oil pan. |
| By Dave Shoe - 09/28/2001 9:07:46 AM; IP 216.243.158.40 |
Lotsa folk do "oil mods" to their FEs because all the books tell them how crummy the stock oiling system is.
I tend to disagree with most of the mods, in particular since most of the instructions leave out the only crucial problem I can see: The oil pan.
A car running 15 second ETs in the quarter can generally get away with a stock oil pan with no problems. This includes many 390GT cars. Early 428CJs got this same oil pan, but apparently accelerated fast enough to drain the pan dry during a race, so in the early 1969 model year Ford recalibrated the 428CJ dipstick to show "full" at six quarts. Two weekends ago I witnessed an early 1969 Mustang 428CJ car with SCJ gears lunch it's motor. The driver had run 180+ passes on the motor with no problems, but still had the early dipstick in the car. This day was the first time he ever raced without "overfilling" the engine with a sixth quart. He'd simply fogotten to add the extra quart and did not realize it was all that importany. On the third pass he spun some beaings in the traps, after running two passes which were a little slower than usual.
If you run in the 14 second e.t. bracket, the extra quart is a marginal fix which will help your engine live longer, just as long as you don't run a performance pump that will drain your pan even faster.
Since you will be moving into the 13 second bracket or better, I'd strongly consider a baffled "T" pan of some sort as the number one, and possibly the only oiling modification for this engine. Other mods, such as adding restrictors to the rockershaft feed line and 1966-earlier style rockershaft drip trays (with the drainback channels stamped in) to prevent excessive oil puddling in the heads, or a performance oil pump (available in HV, HP, and HVHP varieties) with the requisite reinforced pump driveshaft, etc, are all good ideas, too, if done in the proper context.
Headers will obviously wake the engine up, as would a modern camshaft kit. Be certain you select headers which are compatible with 427/428CJ/pre1966/C6AE-R/Edelbrock heads, not the emissions-type heads which have a confusingly different exhaust port location.
Shoe.
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