The engineer from Weissach, Jurgen, knew exactly what my question was!
When asked he paused for a moment to phrase his answer in a round about way without saying it is a true dry sump. Sort of a wink wink answer without violating a NDA
"all of our race cars have dry sump engines".

I asked the question, and I guess we will have to wait and see

The Porsche Product Info Guide MY09 still describes the oiling system as:
Oil Supply (integrated dry-sump lubrication)

 

True dry sump is only one hurdle, there is also reliability and we won't see that unless they are used in thier race cars or until guys have been thrashing them around tracks for a couple of years.... Certainly won't be parting with cash on an unproven car, keeping an eye out for a 997.1 gt3 in preference but there just aren't many on the market here in oz like the US...

 

either way I think the 997 gt3 platform will have a lot longer legs than the 996gt3...

 

Is it just me or have we learned nothing new in this thread?

I don't understand the smoke-and-mirrors game that Porsche is playing here. Why is this the world's best kept secret?

 

Agree...doesn't seem to clear things up for me given the semantics at play.

Do "race cars" = street GTx cars, is the new 9A1 engine "dry sump"??

The question is: will the GTx variants get the same core engine as the race cars (which includes the oil delivery system) as is the case today. If yes, then I think everyone will be happy.

 

I have to agree with am722 - why would Porsche develop such a sophisticated oiling system for street engines only? So my guess is we'll see the new sump on the track / race cars, and Porsche will just market it as a "dry" sump. Hell, they market the Cayenne as a sports car.

If my assumption is true, and one has confidence in their engineering, then presumably they have tested the new oiling system under extreme conditions. And maybe it works really well.

OTOH, maybe the reason for their secrecy is that they haven't yet fully decided on what engines will go into the GT / race cars. Is that possible?

 

Yes, why not?

I still think the GT and turbo motors will be a true dry sump, thus their delay in releasing them. Notice how quickly they released the full line this time, but the turbo and GT3 will be 2010's.

I say A91 (or whatever the current designation is) modified with true dry sump oiling system.

 

The entire "integrated dry sump" with its oil storage and oil pump is simply bolted to bottom of the new A91 engine. The oil pump is chain driven from the crankshaft, not by a quill shaft connected to the intermediate shaft as in the Metzger engine.

It appears to me as though the entire assembly could easily be replaced with a simple cover and a crankcase scavenge pump could be added to the main pump to clear oil out of the crankcase and send it to a separate tank, thus creating a "true dry sump"

The photo below the picture shows the separation point for the assembly to the bottom of the engine. The perspective of this photo would be as though one is looking from the bottom right corner of the picture above it (where the 1_23_09 is)

 

Below is a diagram of the oiling system for the A91, note that the 4 scavenge pumps clear oil from the 4 corners of the camboxes from long oil galleries leading to the central 4 pumps. There is no crankcase scavenge pump.

 

How do you know that the 5th oil pressure pump with variable control is not a scavenge pump?

 

The literature only describes an electrically controlled pressure pump and that's it.

The pressure pump is very trick in that it uses electrical control to slide the pump's gears relative to each other to vary the pressure pumps output. As the engine turns faster less of the pump gears are engaged. This allows the pump to pump a relatively constant flow across a wide RPM band saving power as the RPM increase.

The other part of the system that is clever is there is a windage tray below the crankshaft that fits very tightly to the crank and essentially seals the crankcase from the sump pictured. This windage tray has vanes cut in it to scrape the oil off the crank and send it directly to the sump below, kind of turning the crank itself into a pump. With the turning crank it is essentially impossible to have oil going the other way i.e from the sump back up around the crank.

I believe the black areas in the cutouts I termed oil collection or oil storage poinsts at the sides are actually de-foaming chambers that de-foam the oil collected from the camshaft housing's 4 scavenge pumps.

Here is how the pump looks in the parts catalog.



The windage tray looks like this in the parts catalog:

 

Mjones I just wanted you to know I knew that YOU KNEW EXACTLY what you were asking.
I was just wondering if the engineer knew (you said he DID) and was ***** footing around
trying to give you a trick answer. Dancing around the marketing answer instead of the
right technical answer. Thanks for bringing this up for us.

 

Does it have an oil tank or an oil pan? Looks like a pan to me, hence another integrated dry sump.

 

Yep, another integrated dry sump but the point is the entire system is completely removable now and could easily be made into a true dry sump with oil stored outside the engine.

 

Porsche NA Pres is expected at the Reeves Porsche new showroom reception this evening in Tampa (12/09/08). If you guys compose "the question" I'll attempt to ask it.
Jack