Windage Tray.
Tennis, anyone
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 1,803
Likes: 4
From: SoCal.
Well ,,on a piston engine,the tray bolts to the main caps,as a baffle between the crank case and the oil sump, what a windage tray does
is keep the oil in the sump,,because when an engine is spinning hi-RPM's
the oil tends to foam and the crank counter weights and con. rods
slap the oil / foam all around,,out of control,,the idea is to control as
much as one can, i don't think i would matter much on a rotary though,,
i could be wrong ??
is keep the oil in the sump,,because when an engine is spinning hi-RPM's
the oil tends to foam and the crank counter weights and con. rods
slap the oil / foam all around,,out of control,,the idea is to control as
much as one can, i don't think i would matter much on a rotary though,,
i could be wrong ??
Rotary Freak
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 2,340
Likes: 0
From: Hampton Roads, VA
Well, that depends...
In the boinger world, windage trays are used in the oil pan to reduce... WINDAGE!
So what's windage? It's the pressurized airflow caused by the spinning crank. This entrains oil from the pan in mist form. At high engine speeds, this can account for quite a bit of oil. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two quarts can be floating around in mist form in the crankcase of a smallblock Chevy at about 7000rpm.
Besides the obvious oil starvation possibilities, this adds resistance to the crank as it turns. This resistance shows up in the form of power loss, as the piston, among its other internal and external power losses, now has the additional load of turning the crank through denser air. In addition, the oil mist floating around in the hot crankcase doen't get to spend much time cooling down in the sump before it gets sucked out to perform its lubricating duties again. There is also a greater possibility of the oil getting aerated, thus causing problems with the lubrication and cooling properties of the oil.
A windage tray helps prevent these bad things from happening. They are sometimes said to increase power. In reality, they don't produce power as much as they prevent windage from robbing power.
The tray is basically an oil exclusion pan that bolts to the main caps, to physically separate the sump from the spinning crank. Most are fairly simple pieces of sheet metal, while some are elaborate works, with curves closely matching those of the crank counterweights. Some (Nissan's SR20DE is a good example, as is Mazda's 2.0 12-valve I4) even form a tray below the crank and are a separate piece that is sandwiched between the oil pan and the block.
Now, for us, a "windage" tray would be pointless, because our "crank" doesn't spin in the oil pan. Mazdatrix (or maybe Racing Beat) makes what could be called a windage tray. It is basically a plate, with a bunch of small holes in it, that is sandwiched between the "block" and the oil pan. Its purpose is to slow down the oil that is being dumped out of the rotors. This is so that the oil will lose some of the air bubbles that become trapped in it from being sprayed, and sloshed around, in the rotors. The air bubbles impede heat transfer from hot oil to the relatively cool oil in the sump, and can cause cavitation in the oil pump in extreme circumstances.
Will a "windage" tray make more power in a rotary? No. But it will help keep the oil temps down, and possibly save your engine from lack of lubrication due to aeration at high speeds.
Ren
In the boinger world, windage trays are used in the oil pan to reduce... WINDAGE!
So what's windage? It's the pressurized airflow caused by the spinning crank. This entrains oil from the pan in mist form. At high engine speeds, this can account for quite a bit of oil. Somewhere in the neighborhood of two quarts can be floating around in mist form in the crankcase of a smallblock Chevy at about 7000rpm. Besides the obvious oil starvation possibilities, this adds resistance to the crank as it turns. This resistance shows up in the form of power loss, as the piston, among its other internal and external power losses, now has the additional load of turning the crank through denser air. In addition, the oil mist floating around in the hot crankcase doen't get to spend much time cooling down in the sump before it gets sucked out to perform its lubricating duties again. There is also a greater possibility of the oil getting aerated, thus causing problems with the lubrication and cooling properties of the oil.
A windage tray helps prevent these bad things from happening. They are sometimes said to increase power. In reality, they don't produce power as much as they prevent windage from robbing power.
The tray is basically an oil exclusion pan that bolts to the main caps, to physically separate the sump from the spinning crank. Most are fairly simple pieces of sheet metal, while some are elaborate works, with curves closely matching those of the crank counterweights. Some (Nissan's SR20DE is a good example, as is Mazda's 2.0 12-valve I4) even form a tray below the crank and are a separate piece that is sandwiched between the oil pan and the block.
Now, for us, a "windage" tray would be pointless, because our "crank" doesn't spin in the oil pan. Mazdatrix (or maybe Racing Beat) makes what could be called a windage tray. It is basically a plate, with a bunch of small holes in it, that is sandwiched between the "block" and the oil pan. Its purpose is to slow down the oil that is being dumped out of the rotors. This is so that the oil will lose some of the air bubbles that become trapped in it from being sprayed, and sloshed around, in the rotors. The air bubbles impede heat transfer from hot oil to the relatively cool oil in the sump, and can cause cavitation in the oil pump in extreme circumstances.
Will a "windage" tray make more power in a rotary? No. But it will help keep the oil temps down, and possibly save your engine from lack of lubrication due to aeration at high speeds.
Ren
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