Ray's oiling system

[Hap Waldrop]

Ray on "Project Spridget" build is bascily a street racer if you will, there alot of things going on that car that are customary to racing Spridgets. Ray idd alot of research looking at race cars to get ideas. One fo the things we talked about from the very beginning was external engine oiling. I'm not a big fan of BSP fitting, probably the worse all timing flired fitting for sealing known to to man, and when you look at the prices the vendors get for BSP lines, fitting and such, AN/Aeorquip fittings and lines start to look like a bargain, especially now with Ebay and lots of new Aeroquip surplus form Nascar and other forms of pro racing, and the fact with the hose and the right fitting you can assemble your hose assemblies. So Ray is pretty much doing what most of us do with our Spridget race cars. Where the oil exits the engine at the passenger rar of the instead fo going via hard line to the oil filter housing now it will go via AN braided hose to a oil cooler, then back to the block where the filter housing normally is is a special made blkock all the racers use to repalce the OEM filter housing. Ray will use a remote oil filter housing that will be on oil exit line, but before the oil cooler. The remote filter hosing also allow you to use larger and better oil filter, like the Fram HP_1, and the KN oil filter, it's also a good palce to plumb in oil pressure and oil temp probes.

Pictured below is the fitting that replaces the banjo fitting on the oil exit, this is a reworked fitting that started life as a 3/8 NPT to 10AN, which was re thread to straight threads like the MG has, however there are diffenret ways yto do this you can aslo tap the block for tapered NPT fittings.

 

[Hap Waldrop]

Ok, here's the intake side of external oil system, this special made oil block, Ray got this from Winners Circle, repalces the OEM oil filter housing.

 

[Scott_Hower]

Hap -

Fittings look great. I'm not a huge fan of the anodized red/blue. Does Aeroquip stuff come in silver, or black?

That freeze plug looks a litte ratty. Planning to replace it?

EDIT: oops, just noticed there is no freeze plug and that's the core. Doh!

 

[Hap Waldrop]

Scott you can get steel AN fittings in cad plating. Red and blue is pretty much the industry standard on the aluminum race fittings regardless of what company you use, Aeroquip, Earls, Goodrich, etc.

Yep, that no freeze plug in the hole, that's the water jackets in the block, which look alot worse in the picture than real life, the block has been caustic washed, and a good coolant/water mixture will keep it from getting any worse.

 

[billspohn]

Not my favourite routing. Taking the oil straight from the block to the oil cooler first means that if (and when?) you blow an engine, you'll be chucking out that cooler that is full of bearing bits.

If you route the oil through a filter first, and then to the cooler, you can avoid that. Of course it means you have to use an external fiter head and an adaptor at the block where the filter is to lead the oil back in, but that's no big deal.

On this shot, the oil comes out the same place as on the A series engine. The T fitting allows an oil temp sender to be installed right where the oil will be hottest, coming out of the engine. It goes from there to the filter, then the cooler, and back into the filter head.

The T fitting there is to hook in the accusump. The odd looking blue fitting below the oil exit from the block is a knock sensor. The thin hard line passing over the exit T and the knock sensor is the hard line supplying the cams (the engine is the DOHC MG version).

 

[Hap Waldrop]

If you route the oil through a filter first, and then to the cooler, you can avoid that. Of course it means you have to use an external fiter head and an adaptor at the block where the filter is to lead the oil back in, but that's no big deal.

Yep, that's what we are doing with Ray's 1275, and I done it before with MGB, Headley makes a nice block adapter ( that already set for a accusump if you chose to run one), with the exit fitting on the MGB motor you have to be a bit creative, you need the original fitting with the tube that bypasses the oil galley, and then you cut the BSP male portion of the fitting off, and modify a NPT to AN steel fitting (basicly wack off the NPT section of it) and weld it to the OEM oil exit fitting to make it now a AN fitting. Yep, I've been there and done that