Quick Notes
The Job
Compare a windage tray in a street/strip pan and a drag pan on a big-block
Bottom Line
Improved oil pressure and gained power
Cost (Approx)
$96 (windage tray and studs)/$440 (eliminator pan)
THE WIND IN WINDAGE
Windage is most often talked about as a function of oil getting whipped up and slung about by an engine's rotating assembly. But as it turns out, one of the primary causes of this whipping action is the piston-churned air in the crankcase; i.e., wind. Each piston pushes air into the crank area as it moves down and sucks it back up on the return stroke, eight times per engine revolution. The more revolutions your rotating assembly is turning the more windage you have whipping oil all over the place. When JMS' Mike Johnson wondered out loud about a way to illustrate this, we returned with a 1,400-watt hair dryer...and promptly made a mess. Oil went everywhere, especially up, right where the crankshaft would be. You already knew windage is a bad thing; now you can see why.
Installing a windage tray in this application requires swapping to a set of standoff main studs (left). We ordered ours from ARP, and the torque specs are the same as the regular studs we replaced (90 ft-lb with moly lube). It's easiest to do this while building your engine, but it can be done after the fact; we did it with our engine on the dyno.
We began this experiment by making baseline dyno pulls with our Moroso PN 20460 street/strip oil pan in place. This 8-quart pan is notched to accept our 505ci stroker's 4.250-inch crank throws and has a stock-style baffle mounted in the sump. It's a good, basic pan and works well; we wanted to see if it would work better with a windage tray.