Windage tray - Screen vs Louvered

[ToddK]

I'm looking at buying a windage tray for my 496 stroker. I see Canton now make a louvered type tray as well as the mesh screen type. Which is better? And will the louvered type still work with a 4.25" stroke crank?

[jayb]

I prefer the louvered trays myself.  I usually buy the Moroso trays.  It seems to me that oil bouncing around in the pan can easily penetrate through a screen type tray and go back to interfere with the crank, whereas that is not possible with the louvered trays unless the oil comes back at the tray at just the right angle.

The problem with picking one or the other, though, is that it is just a guess; there's not really any way of proving one is better than the other, without a serious dyno thrash to find out.  And in fact I have run the Moroso tray and the Canton screen back to back on the dyno with a Cobra aluminum oil pan, and have seen no difference between them up to 6000 RPM on a 492" stroker.  To really determine which would be better, I think you would need a very large pan to take the pan effects out of the equation, and then be able to spin the engine to at least 7500 RPM to really accentuate the differences between them.

The trays usually will not interfere with a 4.25" stroke, but they will interfere with larger strokes.  The Moroso trays are pretty easy to modify for larger stroke engines; you just have to cut three tray supports, bend the tray away from the crank, and weld in some spacer sheet metal. 

[Kirk Morgan]

You might want to try a Ishra-Johnson crank scraper. They are very slow but they sell a good product.

Kirk

[ToddK]

Thanks guys. I will look into the crank scrapers, I have heard good things about them.

[Barry_R]

I generally use the canton screen tray - mainly because I feel almost guilty not using something.  I settled on the screen because it's easy to trim and modify, clears most everything, and thought that oil was less likely to bounce back once it hit the screen.  Totally unsophisticated testing in the parts washer....

I have tried running multiple comninations of screen & louver trays and no tray and have never seen anything on the dyno that outperformed a simple big open pan.  I suspect that the tightly contained Y block FE may not benefit from sophisticated oiling mods as much as some other designs.

[Rory428]

My thinking is that a stationary engine on a dyno does not slosh the oil around anywhere close to what a hard launching (or braking) drag car would, or a road racing or circle track application would. A bunch of trap doors, baffles and trays may not show any benefit on a dyno, but may be very useful in a racing enviroment. Carburator jet extensions likely would show no improvement on a dyno, but their usefulness on a wheelstanding drag race car can not be denied. Liquids can do some strange stuff when subjected to abrupt movement. I have never personally tried a screened windage tray on any of my own engines, but I don`t really see how a screen with large openings would be of much help in preventing a moving wall of oil under launch conditions, from getting to the spinning crankshaft counterweights.

[Barry_R]

Totally agree on the pan sump baffles, shelves, and trap doors.

Still really do not know about the block mounted trays & screens.  What I did was just to point the stream from the parts washer at the windage tray.  The solid one bounced the stream back in a splatter (big surprise..huh), but the screen broke the stream up and let it sorta splash through.  So the question is to weigh the relative importance & benefits of controlling windage oil in the sump versus windage throw-off oil from the crank. 

Since there is near zero power on the dyno with/without a block mounted tray I would probably vote for putting all the baffles and such down above the sump where we know they will do some good in oil control.  Some of the really swoopy pans just have a little rectangular opening for the pickup to go through in a otherwise near solid center tray, and expect all the oil to return around openings along the sides of the sump.

[machoneman]

Barry brought up a good point for the deep skirted FE block design. Unlike many other engines with the crank 1/2 hanging below the block's C/L, the FE and say the 426 Hemi likely don't benefit as much from common oil control measures as a SBC, BBC, SBF etc. I've always run solid trays in old Ford and Chevy drag engines but hey, it was long ago and screens were still on the distant horizon!

Not that it is directly related but the deep-skirted replica 426 Hemis in Top Fuel/Funny, etc. all use solid trays with pretty darned shallow dry sump pans. Make me wonder if this is more related to better oil control versus screens or the deep skirt design.   

[Chad D]

Something I noticed with a tray instead of a screen:  my mechanical oil pressure gauge stopped twitching at idle.  I've asked around about this, and the consensus is: (call BS if you smell it  ) air movement in the crankcase generated by descending pistons does not disturb the pool of oil in the sump.  I would imagine this effect would be persistent at any RPM.  There was no noticeable power change, but I'm always in favor of a stable supply of oil.

[jayb]

That's pretty interesting, and also makes perfect sense.  Great observation...

[Heo]

A litle ot but regarding the oil pressure and
crankcase pressure
My son have Mercedes that clogging up the
crancase ventilation (cold damp weather and
short trips)And when the C.V is clogged the
oilpressure go down from 3 kg to 1kg  if anything i thougt it
would rise... and when he clean up the C.V
the OP is back up to 3kg

[ToddK]

Well, I've biten the bullet and decided to go with an Ishihara-Johnson teflon lined crankscraper and one of their modified windage trays.  I have to first make a template to fit my crank and rod set up, so the process will take a while. Hopefully this will give the best performance for a wet sump system.

[jayb]

Post some pictures when you get the part; I'd like to see how it turns out...