Turbo or NA oil pump?

[carl johansson]

Time for an intellectual debate here. So many of you know we run a couple of Mark III supras in the 24 hours of lemons endurance race series. NA 7mge's, ( turbos break, ask out competitors), anyway,

Think about 16 hours of racing on a road course, 15 - 20 shifts per lap, 400 - 600 laps, rpm between 2200 and 6000 (we refuse to go over 6K - for longevity). Running completely stock motors other than ARP bolts, we get amazing durability out of these things. The current engine just passed 200 hours of racing, with nothing but oil changes! That is on top of it being a motor with 175K on it when we bought it!

So we are building up the replacement motor, as we are now burning oil - broken ring in 1 cylinder - other cylinders stil holding 165 lbs of compression.
anyway the donor motor went boom, so we do not want to use the used oil pump, and honestly, for 140 bucks for a new one - going used is not worth the risks.
so we can go with either the turbo oil pump, or the one for the NA motor. First thought was go with the turbo - higher flows have to be better - right? but now I am rethinking that. why?

1. stock setup has worked pretty well!
2. we already run at High RPM, which would result in high flow
so I wonder if :
If we went to the turbo model, would we be pushing so much oil it could be foaming - and emptying the oil pan?

anyone want to put in their 2 cents worth?
Carl Johansson
JBR

[cre]

I would add a full flow oil cooler with thermostat and run the GTE pump. The GTE pump doesn't flow so much that the oil is going to foam and both GE and GTE relief valves are setup for the same pressure. There's no way it's going to empty the pan... Both GE and GTE require very close to the same amount of oil but the GTE has a much longer circuit to feed (the difference is only 1/5qt dry and no difference for a regular oil change). If you're worried about oil level you can safely run up to 1qt over... I wouldn't run that much extra due to the resistance but an extra 1/4 or 1/2, sure.

I don't see a significant reason to run a GTE pump on a stock GE engine but if you run slack clearances, add to the circuit or run a thin oil it's not a bad idea and it's not going to hurt anything. I wouldn't increase the pressure, these engines like high and free flow and gain little from additional pressure.

I know you have to do it all on the cheap. If you can't buy an inexpensive B&M oil cooler and a thermostat then look at local salvage yards for a turbo FC to pull the cooler from... make sure it's the model with the integrated thermostat. Now all you need is a block adapter, filter head and hose. For endurance racing I wouldn't even consider this an optional upgrade.