My motor is on a stand and I noticed that the tiny little bracket that holds the oil pickup tube and the oil breather tube(i think that's what it is) together in the oil pan is cracked. OK, it's completely separated. Since both pieces are bolted together individually, do I need to have this repaired? Should I worry about it?

This pic is of Racer 951's motor...but you can see what I'm talking about.

http://forums.rennlist.com/upload/crank.jpg

 

Weld it back together.

Failure to attach these two back together may result in either one cracking.
The reason is that the combined stiffness of both tubes is much lower. This changes the natural frequency and without doing an analysis possible that this may cause more vibration at the tubes increasing the liklihood of failure. Stay with the stock version here to minimize the potential for cracks in either tube.

Now cracking and braking off the return tube is bad, but probably surviable. Cracking the pick-up tube will probably result in spun #2 bearing and possible a blown-up motor due to lack of oil supply.

 

Mike, did you delete the counter ballance shaft?

 

Failure to reattach will definitely cause the pickup to crack at the bend. In fact if you could get a close up of that picture you would see that the tab is also broken and the pickup is cracked. I am having another one reinforced to avoid this problem in the future. It primarily comes from solid mounting everything on my car.

 

Here is the pic



I have heard of this happening also with mis-timed or delete balance shafts.

 

My balance shafts are deleted, but certainly not mis-tuned

 

Nope...got the balance shafts on my car and they were timed properly...at least when I bought the car. Who knows what happened when the PO had it though.

Looks like I'll have to take it to a welder. I'll take a look for cracks in that location too. I didn't look real hard at first....but now I'm a bit worried.

 

I have a spare one of those.

 

The two are not connected in my car and the return is shortened. Been that way for 3 seasons. I'll be looking at in March.

 

why did you shorten the return?

 

Mike,

Sorry for the hijack, but can I talk to you via AIM or email regarding vacuum line testing?

 

Mike,
I didn't shorten the tube myself. It was done by Bodymotion, or Unmotion as I like to call them. Come to think of it does match the rest of their quality work.
Alan

 

Replace that oil pickup with a new one, don't just weld it. The metal is fatigued and I would not trust it one bit.

It's not like the integrity of your engine depends on it or anything........ (in my best sarcastic voice)

 

Alan C.

Why would the oil return tube be shortened?

I'm not sure how much it was shortened, but the reason it is long is so that it drains under the oil level.

How much was yours shortened? I would be interested to hear their logic.

TonyG