| Many tt.net members are probably aware of Grassroots Motorsports' May 2008 lengthy article about the Z32. GRM's August issue has a letter from Ron Delvalle of Atlanta about that article that discusses several items not in the original article. The last item mentioned is engine oiling: "Lastly, again for you track rats, there is a weakness in the engine's oiling system. It was discovered early in the product life cycle that under high right-hand g-loads, what little oil remains in the pan can slosh to one side and leave the sump exposed to sucking air instead of precious oil. "According to local sources, one of the first places the problem was discovered was at Road Atlanta in their normally aspirated school cars. After losing a couple of motors, Nissan was contacted and initially denied the problem, saying that the cars has been thoroughly track tested in Japan and no such problem occurred. "After much back and forth, it was discovered that in Japan, Nissan ran their test track counterclockwise. Upon running it backward, they encountered the same results. At full song, you can find nearly four quarts of oil up in the cylinder heads to lubricate those precious cams and valves. I'm not sure if later models had better baffling in the oil pan or not, so I would caution anyone with sticky tires on long sweeping turns. "Our solution (copied from the guys that ran in the IMSA Supercar series) was to tap the back of the cylinder head with a -10 fitting. Then, suck the frothy mix in and pump it back to the pan with a pair of Mallory pumps-one for each bank of cylinders T'd to a common return and tapped into the pan. While this was a rather complex arrangement, it has provided me personally with sufficient protection to avoid a costly oil starvation problem."
|
