Oil Pump Dyno

[SSdynosaur]

Bill, please forgive me for interjecting ancient history into a contemporary conversation but is it, remotely, possible that the witness marks you see on the HV cover plate might be evidence of plate deflection vs. questionable machining? A bit of history, you decide relevance; in '66 when I received my first "Frankenstein" HV pump from H&M it was a standard volume, aluminum housing fitted with FT gears, pass. car drive and, as such, required a machined flat spacer to establish proper clearance for the cover(s). This is where the assembly deviated form present-day thinking; the finished pump was fitted with 2 stacked cover plates bolted to the housing with longer bolts. I never saw the stacked cover plates on anyone else's HV pumps which seems to suggest that, possibly, H&M may have had some proprietary engineering data suggesting cover deflection under certain race conditions. Melling stepped into the market as a supplier of ready-made HV pumps with a single cover plate and quickly became the accepted replacement for FE's. I realize that doubling the cover plates isn't a very elegant solution but it certainly seems it would provide a modicum of stiffness if, in fact, that is a problem. Thanks for your interest and educated approaches to solving our FE problems.

[turbohunter]

I wonder if Mr. Garifo is following along. Love to hear a tidbit or two from him, especially regarding his findings as to questionable machining of pumps out there on the market. He see’s a heck of a lot more pumps than we do.

[KMcCullah]

I don’t know about everyone else but I’m interested in volume at a given psi with all the various Melling pumps versus the blueprinted ones. The suspect M57HV makes me wonder....

[CaptCobrajet]

Hey Bill, very nice work!!  We have been making the inlet and pick-up tube bigger for a long time on high revving race pumps.  I think it helps with the cavitation.  It will also take less power to turn it.  It would be neat to see if it shows verifiable returns.  I just did it with "feeling" the resistance on my drill motor and observing bearings over time, and I don't have bearing trouble.  I have wondered if an external bypass feature would help.......similar to the return line on EFI, as long as the supply is healthy. Very interesting!!

[Joe-JDC]

This is one method that I have been experimenting with for dyno testing different pressures vs horsepower loss or gain.  I also open up the oil passages, blend them with as smooth a radius as possible without weakening the pump housing, polish the gears, remove any excess housing clearances, and loc-tite the bolts.  With this modification, I can move the by-pass plunger spring up to ~.400" travel.  Joe-JDC

[Barry_R]

The pressure distribution on the oil pump will side load the rotors - causing one sided wear.  Melling addressed the issue with some of their SBC race pumps by extending the shaft into the cover.

[427John]

Bill, please forgive me for interjecting ancient history into a contemporary conversation but is it, remotely, possible that the witness marks you see on the HV cover plate might be evidence of plate deflection vs. questionable machining? A bit of history, you decide relevance; in '66 when I received my first "Frankenstein" HV pump from H&M it was a standard volume, aluminum housing fitted with FT gears, pass. car drive and, as such, required a machined flat spacer to establish proper clearance for the cover(s). This is where the assembly deviated form present-day thinking; the finished pump was fitted with 2 stacked cover plates bolted to the housing with longer bolts. I never saw the stacked cover plates on anyone else's HV pumps which seems to suggest that, possibly, H&M may have had some proprietary engineering data suggesting cover deflection under certain race conditions. Melling stepped into the market as a supplier of ready-made HV pumps with a single cover plate and quickly became the accepted replacement for FE's. I realize that doubling the cover plates isn't a very elegant solution but it certainly seems it would provide a modicum of stiffness if, in fact, that is a problem. Thanks for your interest and educated approaches to solving our FE problems.

Very good point,and to add to it Holman Moody evidently thought enough of this issue to engineer a new bottom plate for their later kits I've seen them and they are round and thicker than normal in the middle and the outer perimeter has an extremely thick flange machined into it.

[frnkeore]

The pressure distribution on the oil pump will side load the rotors - causing one sided wear.  Melling addressed the issue with some of their SBC race pumps by extending the shaft into the cover.

this wouldn't be hard to do, if there was a source of long drive shafts.

[WConley]

The pressure distribution on the oil pump will side load the rotors - causing one sided wear.  Melling addressed the issue with some of their SBC race pumps by extending the shaft into the cover.

This is A LOT of wear!  That gouge is about 0.012" deep.  The rotor is also noticeably loose in its bore compared to the M-57B pump I just tested.  At first I thought it was squareness of the pump bottom surface relative to the input shaft bore, but I was checking relative to a wonky bore.  Clearly this pump is toast.  You can move the inner rotor back and forth against the outer rotor, which explains the funny noises I heard.  Have to figure out why...

[WConley]

This is one method that I have been experimenting with for dyno testing different pressures vs horsepower loss or gain.  I also open up the oil passages, blend them with as smooth a radius as possible without weakening the pump housing, polish the gears, remove any excess housing clearances, and loc-tite the bolts.  With this modification, I can move the by-pass plunger up to ~.400" travel.  Joe-JDC

Joe - That's pretty sweet!  I can see that these pumps can use plenty of detailing...

- Bill

[WConley]

Hey Bill, very nice work!!  We have been making the inlet and pick-up tube bigger for a long time on high revving race pumps.  I think it helps with the cavitation.  It will also take less power to turn it.  It would be neat to see if it shows verifiable returns.  I just did it with "feeling" the resistance on my drill motor and observing bearings over time, and I don't have bearing trouble.  I have wondered if an external bypass feature would help.......similar to the return line on EFI, as long as the supply is healthy. Very interesting!!

Blair -

Anything you can do to reduce inlet restriction is a good thing.  I've also been discussing the "timing" of inlet and outlet ports with Mike Brunson.  It looks like there is some gold to be mined there, as you must know.  I'm going to be looking further into this...

- Bill

[Barry_R]

Sounds like we have designed a super duty FE oil pump by committee...

An extended shaft working through an extra thick hardened cover.  With revised inlet port locations, a much larger inlet path, and an external bypass.

[pumpbldr]

Bill -- Nice setup. I go away for the weekend and I miss posting. I have seen alot of this stuff . There are fixes to some and not so much for others. Let me tackle a couple of these. (1) Cover plate wear: This is from the sharp edges of the "out of the box" pump when the gears side load. Fix is to better prep things, ie, Me. And or change the center gear and cover plate to the supported version like Barry R mention. Melling has a ton of interchangeability in Ford parts. I tried years ago to get the parts from them, but they refused and threatened Me that I was becoming a competitor. I even tried to order a private label through them, but got refused. I have made better the way I and you guys deserve. But I can only make 1 or 2 a year as the exact spare parts I need get recycled, since Melling wont supply me. (2) Foaming: bypassing will do this. Like Jay said. Don't run constant 7000 rpm right at the bypass zone. If so change the spring and or more distance. Like Cobra plumbing through remotes and oil coolers and back, will get rid of enough before hitting the bearings. sleep at night.
Doug aka pumpbldr
Precision Oil Pumps

[Blueoval77]

Some of this could be made as a drop in   . I am sitting here looking at the mill. A 1/2 cover with a receiver socket in it to receive a longer stud coming out of the center of the rotor . That would solve that part of it pretty quick. Wouldnt need a longer drive shaft or anything other than whats already offered.

[cammerfe]

Bill, please forgive me for interjecting ancient history into a contemporary conversation but is it, remotely, possible that the witness marks you see on the HV cover plate might be evidence of plate deflection vs. questionable machining? A bit of history, you decide relevance; in '66 when I received my first "Frankenstein" HV pump from H&M it was a standard volume, aluminum housing fitted with FT gears, pass. car drive and, as such, required a machined flat spacer to establish proper clearance for the cover(s). This is where the assembly deviated form present-day thinking; the finished pump was fitted with 2 stacked cover plates bolted to the housing with longer bolts. I never saw the stacked cover plates on anyone else's HV pumps which seems to suggest that, possibly, H&M may have had some proprietary engineering data suggesting cover deflection under certain race conditions. Melling stepped into the market as a supplier of ready-made HV pumps with a single cover plate and quickly became the accepted replacement for FE's. I realize that doubling the cover plates isn't a very elegant solution but it certainly seems it would provide a modicum of stiffness if, in fact, that is a problem. Thanks for your interest and educated approaches to solving our FE problems.

Back in the late '60s, when I was working at T&C Livonia, those of us with a drag-race interest and working on FEs routinely used a rebuild kit for an FT for its 'deeper' guts and made an extension plate from a cut-off section of another pump body. We also used the cover plates from both pumps and longer bolts to hold things together. Several departments were called on for 'government work' to do such things as polish gears, lap the spacers and so on. Uncle Henry was very good to us.

KS