Simply Baffling
With all of this oil being pumped, the next problem is keeping it readily available. Like most street-bound engines, the K-series oil pan isn't baffled. A few NASA or SCCA corners and you'll quickly find out what happens when the oil pickup has no oil to pick up. HyTech's oil pan baffle eliminates this problem. It's made of 1/16-inch aluminum sheet metal and consists of 20 separate pieces. They're each bent, riveted, and fastened together to create the main structure. Five trap doors are included in the baffle, which are designed to swing just one way-they let oil into the baffle's center, not out. This ensures a generous supply around the pickup at all times, no matter what the car does. It also incorporates three anti-surge plates to keep the oil from running up the sides and rear of the engine, internally.
This concludes the competition oil pump setup portion of our program but stay tuned and we'll tell you about a way to protect your expensive upgraded valvetrain as well as keep those new aftermarket cams happy as pigs in slop, literally.
The Other Problem
Welcome back. Glad you could be here. There's but another K-series shortcoming. This time it involves camshaft lubrication. Oh, and this one applies to anyone who has put in aftermarket springs and retainers or even just swapped their cams. The K engine feeds oil to its cam journals internally through its number two cam tower, which then feeds oil into the camshafts and then distributes it to each journal. The number two tower features two small holes that are each only 0.05 of an inch in diameter. At low engine speeds the volume of oil feeding the cam journals is marginal, especially when combined with heavier valve spring pressures and thicker oil. To help this, another oil source is needed in order to supply adequate pressure to each journal. If you're thinking of simply hogging out the existing oil supply holes, don't. In doing so, you'd essentially override VTEC. The same oil that's used to feed the cam journals is the same oil that engages VTEC. This is precisely why the holes are small-to ensure adequate pressure. You may recall that pressure and volume are inversely proportional, meaning drilling that hole out will increase volume but reduce pressure.
The Head Fix
Here's the fix. Oil must be robbed from the main oil galley where the OEM oil pressure sending unit resides. HyTech makes a custom stainless steel tee fitting that allows the sending unit to be reused yet offers provisions for the oil we need. A -3 stainless steel braided oil line routes from the tee to the cylinder head's rear where it's tapped into the number five cam tower. Oil is then dispersed to the cam journals. It just so happens that in the back of the number five cam tower there's a preexisting 6mm threaded orifice. The hole must be drilled out in a two-step process. First with a 3/16-inch bit and then further to accept a 1/8-inch pipe tap. The hole is tapped and a -3 adapter fitting can be installed. The cam tower's topside is ready for machining. A 3/16-inch diameter ball-end mill is used to machine a 1/8-inch deep groove from one side to the other and a 3/16-inch bit is used to intersect this groove with the hole initially drilled on the cam tower's backside. Confused? Don't be. HyTech has got it all figured out.
The final step involves plugging the rocker shafts' ends where they enter the number five cam tower's rear. Custom aluminum plugs are machined and pressed into the end of both rocker shafts. Since oil's being introduced back into the engine this way, the shafts need to be plugged to stop the new oil supply from seeping into the rocker shafts, engaging VTEC.