I am a mechanical engineer by trade so naturally I'm curious about details of dry sump oiling on my new Grand Sport. Question: How do piston skirts and wrist pins get lubrication? On conventional wet sump there is dramatic splashing happening that handles these areas. I could speculate on possible ways but maybe someone actually knows.

 

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Even with the wet sump engine, it is not designed for the crank throws/counterweights to run within the oil that is in the sump to splash oil. This just robs horsepower and creates foaming. The oil that is pushed through the rod and main bearings, cam bearings is slung around as is some oil that is draining back down from the upper engine. The Corvette engine that uses the dry sump is not designed any different then the same engine that uses the wet symp. The LS9 engine does use oil squirters on the bottom side of the piston crown though, but not the other dry sump engines. The purpose of the squirters is not to lubricate the bottom of the pistons but to cool them. The oil pan sump's pickup directs the oil through the first stage oil pump and then sent to the reservoir. From the reservoir, it is directed to the second stage oil pump that feeds the engine.

The Corvette dry sump system still has a wet sump, but it is much smaller and still has a pickup tube like the wet sump. The pickup keeps the oil level about a half inch in the sump, except for that oil that tries to climb the sump's sides during hard corning.

A non pressurized oil system, like a small lawnmower engine engine does use the slash system to lubricate it's internal parts, but that's a lot different design then a pressurized system as used in a modern car.