oil pump question ?

RustyRatRod said

I want to know how people who say "I've seen it" regarding pumping the pan dry.......just HOW in the HECK have you seen it? Inquiring minds wanna know that one, mmmmkay?

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No, I did not SEE it but I FELT the engine slow and slow and finally lock up..... the visual evidence was the main and rod bearings when I tore it down..... and the 100+psi out of the new pump when I tested it later! Dang..... I put in the wrong pump shim! That Opel 1.9L had no method of restricting flow to the head like the SBM has with the cam hole.....same thing was an issue with Vega engines in racing: putting in a head flow restrictor was standard practice.

What drag racing runs only prove that a system will not run a pan dry for that period of time; the times are too short to absolutely say it can never run it dry. Run it like that for 2-3 minutes and see if it ever happens is the only way to really know. Take any engine road racing or rallying, with sustained high engine output and RPM's over many minutes, and you will find out the true answer. In my Opel situation, I ran it up full bore 50 times for 10-20 seconds with nary a problem, but it took that first long gradual uphill stage to put sustained RPM's on the engine for 2+ minutes and that is what finally sucked the pan dry.

And, yes, if I had not been in a hurry and put on the oil pressure gauge, I would have seen the excessive pressure issue and fixed it and never had a problem...duh!

So does that answer the question satisfactorily?