I stopped by a friend's shop on my way home to pick his brain about drag racing. He's a professional mechanic and has been racing for 30-some years, and has a 9.5 second car, so I think he knows what he's talking about.

When I told him I was gonna try my hand at racing, the first words out of his mouth were a warning. He tells me that drag racing street cars can run them out of oil in the few seconds of the race!! The problem, he said, is that when you accellerate like that all the oil goes to the back of the pan/engine, and again when you stop, all the oil rushes to the front. Either way, you're not getting oil pumped into the right places, and you can seize your engine after a couple runs.

He also told me that the solution in the old days (sixties and seventies) was putting a bigger oil pan on and increasing the engine's oil capacity to about 8 quarts instead of the typical 4 quarts. He admitted that he doesn't know the impact this oil problem would have on my Crossfire, since it already has a larger oil capacity, but it all depends on the design of the oil system. He told me to ask around and see what other racers are doing before I risk seizing my engine.

So, after that long disertation: what do you guys that are drag racing do about this potential problem?

Thanks in advance,
Tom

 

I'm not a drag racer but, I would think an AMG engineer would have taken care of that for autocrossing an AMG Benz!

 

First off the M112 engine was designed to do hard acceleration... so with the high capacity and sump being located in the lower front section of the pan, I suspect our engines will NEVER starve for oil.

Cheers!

 

lol, if your car was making 1,000 whp and lifting the front wheels off the ground you may have that problem but other than that you should be fine. if cars were that sensitive you would blow your motor every time you hit your brakes or drove up a mountain.

 

Thanks fellas!