fnbrowning

I love my 2016 C7, and I'm ever so happy with my choice of adding the FE2 MSRC option with its bigger Z51 Wheels and Rear Spoiler to the base coupe. I'm having fun pushing it hard on curving hwy exit/entrance rams and cloverleafs. But this has lead to a concern, and that is - I don't want to oil-starve the engine while I'm goofing on the curves!

I've done a due-diligence search here and elsewhere, and I cannot find a reference or chart showing G limits vs. time on left/right turns to avoid oil starvation on wet sump cars. Do we have expert here or elsewhere? Anyone with internal GM notes or docs on potential oil starvation scenarios?

TIA!

jclarksnakes

I remember when the LS1 first came out there was some guidance from Chevy on how long you could go one way around a circle with a time limit due to oil starvation. This might have been only in Camaro applications. Not sure. I think I remember there were different time limits depending open which direction you were turning. A few years later when they made the LS6 for the C5 ZO6 they addressed the issue with a new "batwing" type oil pan that supposedly totally fixed the problem. I would guess that LS and LT engines since then have been designed taking this into consideration.

X25

I remember that the long left turns are more dangerous, and this issue is also more prevalent on Corvettes than Camaros, since the low engine height dictates smaller oil pan on Corvettes, leading to less oil reserves before starvation happens. For instance, my 5th gen LS3 has 2 more quarts, 8 quarts total, compared to 6 quarts of a regular C6 Corvette with no dry sump.

All said, I don't think it's likely to ever have this issue at street or any other public drive. It takes very aggressively sustained Gs to cause an issue like this, and it's not likely in public roads, since even a slight hesitation in driving to look around for a second, which happens all the time in public driving, would likely prevent the issue.

Iconic

For what it's worth - I have seen most every Corvette model from C4 through C7 drive the high banks of Talladega, including various 60s-70s era Chevelle, GTO Judge, Nova, Mustang, etc muscle cars and newer Chevy Silverado trucks, none with a oil starvation problem. Admittedly I might be comparing apples/oranges with long 33 degree left turn banking vs high Gs at a road course.

X25

The banking changes the direction of the centripetal force to more towards the bottom of the engine instead of to the side of the car, so it might actually help quite a bit with the situation. In short, yes, it's not the same : )

Iconic

Agree, at high speeds and thus high Gs. But to clarify my example, there isn't much for G-force. These are parade laps and speeds are relatively slow on the high bank, so the oil gravitates to the left side of the pan. Perhaps mirroring a long hard right turn on a flat.

Again, I may have brought oranges to an apple thread.

fnbrowning

Yes, there was quite some discussion on this right before the 2010 C6 Grand Sport came out with its integrated Z51 pkg and dry sump.

Bill Dearborn had great information on the wet sump car lubrication problems pre-factory dry sump. But that was the LS3 and now we have a different engine.

So, is there no consensus or tech articles on the wet sump LT1??

Paging Bill Dearborn to the white courtesy phone!

rb185afm

I have tracked a Base with no issues. Well, no issues with oil starvation. Your only going to have a problem on a track with track only tires on long sweepers. Same deal in the Camaro's I came from. Guys were good up to a NT01 level tire. Once you step up to a slick and hit long sweepers, you might have a problem. Then you can add a baffled oil pan and be good up to 1.4 G's. On the street you will never have an issue. You cant pull enough G's with street rubber. I don't know the actual number for the LT1 but the LS3 was good for 1.3G's. I hit is consistently. GM is putting the LT1 without a dry sump in the Gen 6 1LE. And it can easily hit 1.3G's in a banked corner just like mine did stock at Laguna. In fact the ZL1 that just turned a 7 min 29 sec Nuberg time did so without a dry sump.

ImprovedRacing

It's highly unlikely you will ever starve for oil on the streets, so long as your oil level isn't low. You won't be pulling anywhere near the G's you would on a race track. If you're not tracking the car, you don't really need to worry.

The two most important things you can easily do to prevent oil starvation:

1) Make sure your oil level is always topped off. We have seen people run into oil starvation (usually at the track) because they were unknowingly down by 1 quart or more of oil.

2) Have a good low oil pressure alarm. I'm not sure if the stock dash system on the C7 has this feature. But if you have a loud alarm that goes off should your oil ever drop below 20 or 25 PSI, it gives you enough warning to back off and avoid damaging the engine. You can then address the issue with upgrades to prevent oil starvation.

By the way, here is why LS and LT block experience oil starvation on left-hand more than right-hand turns:

A shortcoming of the LS and LT blocks is that they are deep skirted blocks with more isolated mains (than SBCs) and this causes a lot of windage issues. The engine rotates clock-wise (when viewed from the front) which means oil is being flung off the crankshaft onto the right (passenger) side of the crankcase. Because it's a deep skirted block, a large percentage of the oil gets flung against the side of the crankcase instead of onto the windage tray where it can drain into the oil pan. The windage at high RPMs will actually also slow the oil from draining back into the pan off the right side of the crankcase.

So when you turn left, all of the oil is sloshing to the RIGHT of the oil pan, and oil is also being flung off the crankshaft onto the RIGHT of the crank case, running back down into the oil pan AFTER (to the right of) the oil pump pickup tube.

When you turn right, oil sloshes to the LEFT of the pan, but oil is being flung from the crankshaft onto the RIGHT of the crankcase, draining back into the RIGHT side of the oil pan, BEFORE (to the right of) the pickup tube.

So the pickup tube gets more oil flowing towards it when you're turning right than when you're turning left.

There are basically two solutions:

1) The obvious one is to use a short skirted block, like the Dart LS block. This is the entire reason Dart developed that block. Obviously, this is expensive, requires a special oil pan, etc.

2) Instead of relying on oil being flung off the crankshaft, you have to remove it from the crankshaft more effectively. The Improved Racing crankshaft scraper and windage tray kits are designed to address exactly this particular weakness in the LS blocks. The scrapers closely contour the crankshaft to remove the excess oil from the crankshaft and work with our windage tray to allow it to drain back into the oil pan instead of being flung and suspended onto the side of the crankcase. A side effect of this is that you will gain around 5-10 HP at the wheels, because the crankshaft is now effectively lighter and doesn't have to work against the windage oil suspended in the crankcase.

We don't have a crankshaft scraper kit for the LT engines yet, but we will be developing some in the future.

We specialize in engine oiling, specifically in preventing oil starvation in LS engines. We also make several drop-in, trap-door oil pan baffles for LS engine oil pans. Being a newer platform, we don't have a lot of experience with the LT engines yet, but if you have any other questions feel free to ask and we will respond as best as we can.

Bill Dearborn

The net is you will not destroy the engine due to oil starvation driving the car on the street unless you have too low of an oil level to begin with. On the track follow GM's advice in the OM. Another thing you can do is reduce rpms. If you are going around a turn in 2nd gear at part throttle shift to third and use more throttle to get the same HP at a lower rpm. You may actually get around the corner better since third may make it easier for you to use the throttle to better balance the car.

Bill