Guru_4_hire

OK since it appears that the C6 is dry sump. Where is the tank? And how much oil does it contain?

Wishinforavette

Looking straight at the car, the tank is on the left side, most people atleast believe a round cylindrical thingy in the diagram to be the tank. As for capacity, I don't think anyone knows.

davidfarmer

If that drawing is correct, I'd say it's 1.5-2 gal. I ran a 3 gal in my WC car, and it was larger in diameter than the thing in the drawing.

The frame rail sits directly below this area, so the tank must sit rather high. I wish they had found a place lower and further back in the car.

LTC Z06

Yeah it seems like they did just for hype, if the T1 guys didn't need a dry sump I sure don't.

Guru_4_hire

Anybody got this drawing?

LTC Z06

It's one of the new pics, the one showing the cars insides next to the race car.

yelloz06

January!

03QuicksilverZ06

You can see it to the left of the engine

davidfarmer

After looking at the picture more closely, I don't see a pump mounted anywhere. Maybe they were able to put a dual stage pump (or 2 pumps) inside the oil pan. That would be pretty cool!

Guru_4_hire

Is it that thing that is just to the left of the water pump

davidfarmer

on a normal C5, that is the AC compressor, with a small idler/tensioner. The setup looks identical to a C5, as best I can tell from the picture.

Z06CTSV

Didn't know the specifics on dry sump, so I looked it up:

Most production cars have a wet sump oil system, it's the area below the crank shaft. In a wet sump, the oil that you put into the engine is stored beneath the crankshaft in the oil pan. This pan has to be large and deep enough to hold four to six quarts of oil -- think about two 3-liter bottles of soda and you can see that this storage area is pretty big.

In a wet sump, the oil pump sucks oil from the bottom of the oil pan through a tube, and then pumps it to the rest of the engine.

In a dry sump, extra oil is stored in a tank outside the engine rather than in the oil pan. There are at least two oil pumps in a dry sump -- one pulls oil from the sump and sends it to the tank, and the other takes oil from the tank and sends it to lubricate the engine. The minimum amount of oil possible remains in the engine.

Dry sump systems have several important advantages over wet sumps:

Because a dry sump does not need to have an oil pan big enough to hold the oil under the engine, the main mass of the engine can be placed lower in the vehicle. This helps lower the center of gravity and can also help aerodynamics (by allowing a lower hoodline).

The oil capacity of a dry sump can be as big as you want. The tank holding the oil can be placed anywhere on the vehicle.

In a wet sump, turning, braking and acceleration can cause the oil to pool on one side of the engine. This sloshing can dip the crankshaft into the oil as it turns or uncover the pump's pick-up tube.

Excess oil around the crankshaft in a wet sump can get on the shaft and cut horsepower. Some people claim improvements of as much as 15 horsepower by switching to a dry sump.
The disadvantage of the dry sump is the increased weight, complexity and cost from the extra pump and the tank -- but that's a small price to pay for such big benefits!

Joe
New Orleans

shaky

Thank for the info Joe.

davidfarmer

one other advantage is that the scavenge pump can draw a stronger vacuum in the crankcase.

Although I agree that moving the oil out of the engine can allow the engine to sit lower, I highly doubt they will be lowering the engine in the Z06 (vs the C6)

SWCDuke

As I've said before, expect this dry sump system to be tightly integrated with the engine - internal scavenge and pressure pumps and the tank may be attached to the engine - possibly underneath in the space occupied by the LS2 wet sump because, as David said, the engine likely will NOT be lowered as this affects the entire driveline architecture, and the LS7 will likely have a conventional large diameter single plate clutch. In order to lower the engine they would also have to replace the conventional clutch with a small diameter flywheel and mutliplate clutch, which, along with a shallow dry sump pan is required to lower the engine.

Another trick used by OE dry sump designs is to intergrate the sump into the bell housing.

I wouldn't necessarily believe that the "tank" in the ghosted image is the oil tank, but the lack of an identifiable fill cap in any of the currently available photos means we are all just guessing.

Duke

chris442

You can see some this tank in the lower left corner of this picture:

Now I don't have too much knowledge of dry sumps, but the line that goes into the tank doesn't look like it could hold hot, high pressure oil. Now it could probably be used to pull vacuum on the crankcase similar to a pcv. I know that GM would not make an oil line like that. My s10 has an oil cooler on it, and the lines they used are basically like AC lines. They are mostly hard line with a very short section of high pressure rubber to allow for engine movement.

Btw, Dave, I always enjoyed watching you race in World Challenge.

SWCDuke

Those are probably refrigerant lines.

Duke

chris442

I was looking at the flimsy looking black plastic hose that looks similar to an evap line. If you look at the picture of the Z06 and C6R it looks like it is shown also.

davidfarmer

I agree that the line you see looks more like a fuel or emmisions line, not any sort of oil line. However, GM likes using plastic lines, and the scavenge line is NOT necessarily at high pressure, only high temp. There is no load to create high pressure. If they can run the entire length of the car with plastic fuel lines (high pressure, low temp), I bet that are capable of making a similar line that can do the converse (high temp, low pressure)

We are all obviously just speculating, only time will tell.

Painrace

The dry sump pumps move a lot of air so they need to be of reasonable size and must be strong. Any failed oil line means engine failure.