Limited Late Model Motor - Build Your Own Race Engine, Part Four

Pull and clean the gears and, before reinstalling, fill them with assembly grease. This will help the pump prime faster and start sending oil throughout the engine.

Once the gears are in place, squirt a little more grease down the sides to fill the cavities.

The cover has to maintain a good seal for the pump to work correctly, so apply a little blue Loctite when reinstalling the four bolts.

You should use an oil-pump pickup designed to work with the oil pan you are using. A stock pickup, for example, will rarely work with a racing oil pan. The fit to get the pickup to slide into the pump housing will probably be tight. Most pickups have a ridge near the end that you can put a wrench on. Now you can tap the side of the wrench with a hammer to help encourage the pickup into position.

To make sure the oil pump isn't left sucking air in the turns, the pickup must be between 3/8 and 1/4 inch off of the bottom of the oil pan. And the only way to know this is to measure. Begin by using a straightedge and a ruler to measure the distance from the oil-pan rail to the bottom of the pan in the area where the pickup will sit.

Now measure from the pickup to the bottom of the block. Make sure to keep your straightedge level. Allow 1/16 inch for the compressed oil pan gasket. The distance from the block to the pickup should be 3/8 to 1/4 less than the distance from the pan rail to the bottom of the pan plus 1/16 inch for the gasket.

In our case, there was too much room between the pickup and the bottom of the pan. Three washers underneath the tab on the pickup fixed this. Of course, if you do this, make sure to use a longer bolt on the oil pump cap to make sure you have enough threads engaged into the housing.

Here's a quick shot of the Champ Pans oil pan we are using with the windage tray removed. Champ also provided the pickup. This is an eight-quart pan, which will provide enough volume of oil to help keep things cool. Notice the dividers. Each is equipped with a trap door that only allows oil to flow one direction. This helps keep oil trapped in the area around the oil-pump pickup so that oil can't move out from underneath the pickup thanks to g-forces in the turns. If that ever happens, your oil pump is left sucking air and your bearings are as good as dead.

Race engines don't generally use dipsticks, so go ahead and fill the hole for the dipstick tube with silicone while the oil pan is off.

While the engine is upside down for the installation of the oil pump and oil pan, now is also a good time to install the oil filter mount. This is a mount I picked up from Bradley Auto Parts, which has no bypass. Stock engines use an oil filter bypass to allow the oil to keep flowing even if the filter gets clogged or the oil pressure gets too high. This isn't the best option in racing. A mount without a bypass makes sure all the oil goes through the filter. Just make sure to use the largest oil filter you can get so that it will have plenty of capacity and keep it changed regularly.

The oil-pan gasket is a four-piece set from Cometic. Begin by laying down the sides for the oil-pan rails. To help completely seal the pan, apply a small dab of silicone in the corners.

Drop the end pieces in place, and then apply another small dab of silicone on top of the ends of the rubber pieces.