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I have an deep, wedge shape oil pan that was made for my plane. Looking to add some baffling to help with sloshing and oil tipping back and forth during climbs/descends. The pickup is the pink arrow at the back of plane (pulley's, front rotor) while the front wedge is the front of the plane (flywheel, rear rotor).
Should I just do a flat plate on top with drain holes drilled in specific spots?
*I don't know all the spots where the oil drains down from the irons
Add any flapper valves? (piano hinges with weighs on the doors)
Any vertical plates inside ?
Okay, how about this. Are the same type of drain holes for RX7 baffle plates, the same for RX8? I don't know if there are any differences in the oil returns between the engines.
Nice. I couldn't find any RX8 oil plate examples. Thanks for that. The two holes side by side on the exhaust side seem to be a common theme. I'm curious though why no holes for the front oil reg or chain?
If I recall correctly, the front reg shoots straight down, while the rear shoots across. Maybe the front reg shoots straight down into the plate, rather then straight into the oil causing air bubbles and such? Not sure about the chain, I thought it needed clearance as it sticks out past the bottom iron. I could also weld the plate down into the pan a little, to clear the chain.
Where the oil discharges is not that specific and as it falls onto a flat plate it’s going to flow to where ever the nearest opening possible. At the same time, openings near the outer perimeter are not going to contain oil level below it under g-loads and and inclinations relative to gravity. The goal is to keep the pickup sufficiently covered which if designed properly doesn’t require every last drop to be at the pickup:
I went a little different approach. Not worried about the side G loads, and focused more on pitching up and down. I did have to have a good size hole for the oil pickup tube to fit thru the top plate, I think my pickup is a 3" x 2" rectangle box. Climbing, all the oil heads back towards the pickup tube so no issues there. Oil will get past the upper hole for the pickup tube, but there is plenty of oil to keep the pickup tube submerged. The only thing I could do different, is to add an extra piece to bolt over the hole once the pickup tube passes the plate. Don't think its necessary at this moment based on my climb angle. Descending, I angled the long plate so the oil will still drain back even when pitched down. Added piano hinge trap door to keep the oil from going forwards away from the pickup tube. It's not a tight fit, it will just slow the oil down from moving forwards.
One thing I did notice that I thought was odd. The dip stick has the low level about the height of the pan. When at the full mark, the oil chain would be covered and always be stirring up and foaming the oil in my option.
Well it’s the full mark when the engine is not running and the oil is all mostly drained into the sump. When it’s running the oil is all over the place with a lower sump level.
The only potential issue I see for your design is long, steep descents, but I suppose you can only do that so long until whether the engine runs out of oil or not isn’t going to matter, lol.
It seems to me in your case it’d be better for a centered sump, which would cover you in either descent or ascent mode. Or at least your design seems to greatly favor ascending over descending.
Ah of course. duh. That's still good to know. The low mark is pretty much at the bottom of the engine plates (top of oil plan). Full mark from there is about 1.8qt. I still need to make my own dip stick, but I have about 8qt total in mine. Still playing around with what the right amount is for my setup, so oil doesn't reach the catch can.
A typical decent angle is actually only 3 degrees. About 400-500feet per min. The angle I calculated to put on the front plate, should still allow the oil to drain back even if I'm around 20 degrees emergency decent. For climbing, it can be anywhere from 5-25 degrees (depends how much fun you want to have), so that's why I favored ascending over descending. A center sump would be nice, but I had to have the wedge shape on the oil pan to fit the radiator underneath. A dry sump would be the cats ***, but I'm not planning on going upside down (on purpose).
Rest of the oil setup I'm happy with. Weber jets in the e-shaft, thermal pellet, rx7 rear reg, 2 washers on front reg. 120psi full power, and 115psi cursing. Using Valvoline VR1 Racing 20w-50 conventional, and will move to synthetic on next oil change.
08-31-2019, 10:14 PM
