Pre oilers

[snakebitekit]

Coming from the hot rod arena there has been a great deal of talk about pre oilers.

I am just begining on my Cobra, in fact I don't have it here yet, but from reading many, many conversations I know that a lot of these machines owned do not get driven too frequently, some every weekend some once a month, etc.

Many hotrod rod owners install a pre oiler to prevent the "hot starts". Any thought from the Cobra community?

Dennis

[ERA-576]

I assume you're refering to an Accusump. You can get them in 1, 2 or 3 qt capacity. I've got a 2 qt system. It's cheap protection for the engine, especially if you have a $$$$$ side oiler, or any engine. If the car sits over an extended period, or even if it's fired up on a daily basis, it nice to see 30 lbs oil pressure before you turn the key. It's really nice when making hard turns on a road course, knowing that if you momentarily lose oil pressure due to oil not being picked up from the pan, the Accusump will inject oil as needed to maintain pressure I've never noticed a drop in pressure, but when you're concentrating on high speed turns, you tend not to be watching the oil pressure gauge at the time.

[BigRed427]

I look at it as one more thing that can leak.

[vettestr]

Well I think 576 pretty much summed it up. I have also used my own version of the Accusump to supply a small oil flow to the turbo on shut down. This set up stops coking / burning of the oil inside the turbo. My set up takes 3 1/2 min. to drizzle oil on the hot bearing after shut down.
I also have pre - oilers on my cobras and RV. The RV sits for a couple of months at a time but will hit 35 PSI when I hit the button. This is cheap insurance and a preventative measure that makes a lot of sense to me.

[rdorman]

Accusump... does double duty. The vast majority of bearing wear is at start up so why not.

[double ugly]

The poor man's solution was to install a AN fitting on the oil pump (dry sump set up) and use an old soda type fire extinguisher filled with oil and charged with air. Worked great on the dry sumped cars anyway. It gave you instant oil pressure when the trigger was squeezed. Someone here could tell you where to install a fitting on a wet sump engine I suspect.
John

[Tom Wells]

Heehee.

Another place to leak indeed.

My Accusump leaked from day one. I re-sealed the connections four times before they stopped leaking. Then the pressure switch developed a leak - Canton replaced it under their warranty.

Is it worth it?

You bet!

I now have oil pressure over the full track at Gainesville, and even on turn 16 at Sebring!

Believe it or not, I could make the oil pressure fluctuate frighteningly just by doing the NASCAR tire-warming maneuver; as I jerked the car left-right-left, the oil pressure would head for zero...

Don't try that on a busy street

I use it as the posters above do, too - if the car sits for a while, it's nice to be able to flip the switch and have pre-start oil pressure

I won't leave home without it!

Tom

[Garage10]

So which is the best one to get and where ?
Thanks

[Jim Vander Wal]

I have the 3qt Canton, very pleased. Plumbed with Canton's electric switch system, oil filter and thermostat. All AN-12 lines.

With 60psi shown on the air side of the AccuSump I get 20-25psi at the oil pressure gauge before I start it. The gauge reads at the back of the block, the far end of the oil system.

Jim, SPF 1855

[RICK LAKE]

Accusump and Canton look and work about the same. Either one will do the job. I have an Accusump 3 quart and it saved my motor from a broken rocker shaft when racing. Lifter popped out of bore and was loosing oil pressure in the motor, went from 75 psi to 20 psi with lifter out. Caught motor in time. Repaired the rocker shaft and preoiled car. Fired up motor and have 75 psi again. I use for autocross and road racing at R&G. 2 notes, If you use the electric switch for open and close, add a relay for the power and fuse. The other thing is mount out of HARM'S way. Put a shield around it for protection. It's nice, turn on switch and wait 10 seconds, 30 psi of oil in the motor. Start motor and recharge system. When racing, turn on switch for protection. After race is over rev up motor to refill tank. Ready for next start. If the big 3 used these per lubers, motor would go 500K miles without a bearing failure. I am adding one to my tow truck with a new motor. 3 quart. Some people add a low pressure light on the dash for oil. If car sits a long time, I let the air pressure out of the accusump and recharge it before startup. I think it helps save the seal inside the housing. Rick Lake

[Hal Copple]

I had put this on SCOF recently, will re-post here. I agree with Rick, but i never have had any sort of problems with my own Canton unit. I always pre-lube, even if only had my motor off for several minutes.

begins:

have had the two quart model with the standard electrical switch for some years, i have the switch on a light toggel mounted on a small panel just below my dash. So i can discharg it when i want to.

I did not have room for the three quart model. Here is what i have learned, and how i use mine.

First, when checking my sump's dipstick, i first rev or idle my motor to put my A'sump to 60 psi, which is my engine's cruise hot oil presssure. I then open the hood and verify on the A'sump's pressure gage that it is indeed at 60 psi. That way, when my engine is at cruise RPM, my A'sump is filled, ready for discharge. If your engine is low on oil, and you assume your A'sump is filled, when it is not, and it has put 2-3 quarts of oil into the engine's sump, and your dipstick reads "full", then when you start your engine, it will immediatly pull that much oil out of your sump and put it into thte A'sump, making your engine's sump that low on oil, unknown to you. I found this out by accident, so i always verify that my A'sump is fully charged before i assess the quantity of oil in the engine's sump.

Second, i always pre-lube for several seconds, on my car, the engine oil pressure will rise to about 20 psi, and then bleed down, quickly or more slowly, depending on how hot or cold the oil is. Whe it starts to drop on the engine's gage, i start my motor, and let it idle until i am sure all the things inside have fresh oil, before i give move my car under its own power.

I leave my A'sump "on" when driving, indicated by my lit switch (from Radio Shack), so that should my motor suddenly need oil for a few moments like when i sheared a distributor drive, it is ready to give me several seconds of oil to the bearings while i try to figure out what just happened.

When i am nearing home or a destination, i flick my A'sump switch off, so it is fully charged for the next engine start up, if the oil is hot, i will briefly rev my motor as i pull into my garage, to make sure it is filled to my standard of 60 psi, then turn off the switch before I let my motor idle down for shut down.

When i am on the track, and review my track video, I watch my oil pressure gage in the corners and under hard acceleration. I have a road-race Aviad pan, well baffelled with trap doors and such, but on some long corners, the cornering forces can put lots of oil up into the valvecovers, perhaps leading to oil pump pick up starvation, and i can see my oil pressure suddenly drop to around 40 psi, then stabilize there as the A'sump dumps its oil into the oiling circuit. The pressure then rises as i accelerate at track-out.

To me, the most important thing with an A'sump is that a refill never significantly reduce the oil pump's output to the engine itself. I would not want a fast refill to the A'sump, taking away oil that is better sent to the mains, i much prefer the theory that oil preferentially goes first to the engine, then more slowly fills the A'sump. The only potential unwanted side effect of the slow refill of the A'sump is that my engine for a few seconds has an overfilled crankcase, possiblly leading to frothing of the oil from the crankshaft, not necessarily a good thing. But with a smaller A'sump capacity, it is less than a three quart model would cause, and I still think the engine bearings need oil before the A'sump gets it.

In summary, oil first to the motor, then to the A'sump. I think a switch is vital to being able to reliably check the engine's dipstick, or you won't know how much oil is where in your system.

My own A'sump and electric switch has worked reliably for some years. There is a picture of my car in the Canton catalogue, by the way. I sent one to them, they put it in their catalogue several years ago.

I use one of the no bypass long canister replaceable element Mecca oil filters on my Jag.

Anyway, if you use an A'sump, i think you need a precise set of standards of how you check your oil level, and how you use it to suit your needs.

All the best,

Hal, in ole faithful #672

[Tom Wells]

Garage10,

Just to head off what seems to be a slight bit of confusion:

ACCUSUMP is made by Canton. They are one and the same company. We know the oil pans as Cantons because that's the name they are sold under. The accumulator is made by Canton, but branded ACCUSUMP. Don't ask me why - I don't know

There are other accumulators made by other companies such as Moroso. Since I've not used any of the others, I can't comment on them.

It has become quite clear to me that I would likely have lost my engine's bearings on the race track several times without the accumulator. I have the trap-door equipped Canton "road race" oil pan and it clearly will not by itself allow my oil pressure to stay up reliably on the track. This may be due to other factors than the pan, such as Hal's mention of the valve cover area drainback rates being too slow, or when in a long, highspeed turn on the track, or even a skidpad; my oil pressure drops a lot. This device keeps the pressure up nicely under those circumstances.

Infrequent starts are another good place to use the accumulator.

Sorry if I added to the confusion.

Tom

[SuperHart]

Here is an alternative setup that I have used on my Cobra for the past five years, Pre-Luber Products. Instead of a pressurized tank this system uses an electric pump plumbed into your oil cooler line to pressurize the oiling system prior to ignition. Turning the ignition key to the #1 position begins the process. The pump runs for 60 seconds and automatically shuts off. It provides 40-45 lbs. of oil pressure. The unit can also be set to run for 1-5 minutes after you shut the engine down to prevent coking but I chose to disable that feature on my unit.

The hose to the lower left is the outlet from the pump to the gold anodized T fitting in the oil cooler line (hose on the right). The hose in the middle is the supply hose to the inlet port of the pump coming from the oil pan.

[RICK LAKE]

SuperHart You have a nice system for your peroiler, but there is NO filter for this oil:confused, which comes from the BOTTOM of the oil pan through the drain plug hole. Any metal in the oil pan could get sucked into the motor and bearings through this setup. My oil has gone through the filter first before going into the accusump tank. I hope there is some screens or filters in the lines going and coming from oil pan and into block. Is there a check valve to stop the oil from going back into the oil pan through the supply line? . There was a company that used the dipstick hole to supply oil to a little pump for peroiling a motor. Pump was very strong and it would suckup the crap in the bottom of oil pan if the hose was too long. There was NO filters on the hose. The company was sued and went under. I know you change your oil on a regular basic, but if a bearing starts going bad and shaves, your peroiler could suck up the metal and could spin a bearing and loose the whole motor. Just my thoughts. Rick L. I think it is more for turbo system cars for cool down than motor perlubers.

[elric]

i have the same system on my car; works great. the idea is to put the pump output at the filter boss so that the oil is always filtered. those pumps have screens and check valves to answer your other concerns. with the amount of time and money we put into these cars it would seem foolish not to run some type of preluber; there are no negatives to having one.

[SuperHart]

The way my system is plumbed you are correct, the oil to pressurize the system is drawn from the oil pan. However, the oil is forced through the oil filter before being delivered to the engine so metal is not a problem. I agree that unfiltered oil should not be pumped into the engine and had the same concern until I studied the schematic. If you think about it, the oil route using the Preluber is the same as when drawn from the pan via the oil pump; pan -->oil pump -->oil cooler --> oil filter --> engine bearings. I run a Canton T-sump road race pan. There is a fitting on the side of the sump that I used for the preluber pickup. Therefore oil is sucked from approximately one inch up from the bottom of the pan, actually higher in the sump than the oil pump pickup is located (1/2" from the bottom). There is indeed a check valve in the Preluber unit that prevents reverse oil flow back to the pan. Unlike the Accusump, this powered system is great to use to pressurize the engine following an oil and filter change. Just turn the key to ON and allow the unit to build pressure. I have noted that following an oil and oil filter change on an engine with an oil cooler it does take several seconds to build oil pressure at the first start. Without this system the engine would have to be cranked and run without oil pressure for that several seconds until all the air is purged.

For those individuals concerned about loss of oil pressure during cornering, etc. this should never happen if the oil pickup screen was set up correctly to begin with and if there is a proper oil level on the dipstick. Since most of us run a mechanical oil presure gauge and might not be looking at it if and when the oil pressure suddenly drops to Zero, I offer the following suggestion: on the oil pressure gauge fitting on the side of the block install a 1/8 NPT T fitting to allow installation of both the mechanical capillary tube AND an electric sending unit. Plumb the sending unit to a red dash light and a buzzer. If the oil pressure takes a nose dive the light will illuminate and the buzzer will warn you immediately to kill the engine.

[double ugly]

If space is a limitation an external pressure oiler isn't a bad option. All you need is a fitting and an improvised fire extinguisher. Total investment is less than $50.00.

[Garage10]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Sounds like some good advice.

[olddog]

Been thinking of adding an accusump.

Question: when you change oil, do you open the valve and drain the accusump? If not the old oil stay in it. If you do drain it, how do you refill it?

[MalcolmV8]

I've been reading this thread with great interest. Can someone explain a little more on how the accusump works? I'm curious as to why it has a valve to operate that you need to open and close manually or electrically via a switch?

Also when the car has sat for along time how do you make it pre-oil the system? Do you charge it with your air compressor to force the oil into the motor?

I'm thinking this would also be a great addition to a daily driver which has to deal with 0 degree winter start ups. Getting some oil in there first would be a big help.

I also have an 03 Cobra that sits over the winter and pre-lubing it before summer time startup and even after oil & filter changes would be great.

Thanks for any additional info on how this works.

Malcolm