Over filling oil to prevent oil starvation
 

I track my car and have had a history of rod bearing failure. I have been considering overfilling my oil level slightly to ensure that the oil pickup always has a good supply.

Does anyone do this?
How much do you overfill? Half a quart, quart, more?
Is there anything that would make this a bad idea? Im sure a lot of extra oil could be a problem. Ive also heard that if you fill it too high and the crankshaft is sloshing the surface of it that it can aerate the oil and cause it to act like very thin oil.

Why do you think you are oil starved? These engines run at the track all the time with no problem.


If you are really worried an Accusump is the easiest and cheapest. Dry sump is the best and most complicated and expensive and works the best.

Are you running an oil cooler? What oil? Are you monitoring oil temp/pressure?

From my experience only people that where paranoid about oil starvation, blew up their engine by doing all kinds of preventive measures.

As for me and my personal track times, I just made sure everything was toped off. Zero problems.

Aerating oil is bad. I've never heard of anybody over-filling to prevent problems.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3003331 talks about baffles.

Accusump is recommended.

This thread might interest you: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63723

My rod bearing failed while doing a high speed run on the highway. My friend's engine had a rod bearing fail while on track. I just haven't wanted to spend the money on a sump yet. My friend just added baffles to his new engine.

I run the recommended 0w20 with an oil cooler now. I didn't have one at the time my car failed. My friend runs 5w30 and had an oil cooler when his failed. The data log of his temp showed totally fine in the 220-230 F range right up until about 30 seconds before the failure when it suddenly started rising. Probably already failing at that point.

Overfilling the oil can be as bad as having too little. If your concern is the oil moving enough that it can't be picked up then too much will move enough the get aerated.

A high speed run on the highway, hard to think of how starvation could happen. Many of us have run these cars very hard with no problems.
At a track, a very long carousel or turns are usually the problem. I would think that at the track your friend would be monitoring the pressure and temperature and seen the drop in pressure before the engine would fail. A pressure drop usually happens the same place in the same corner each time around. Staying in a higher gear will often help. Loosing a couple of tenths VS a DNF is a good plan.
This is coming from a guy that HAS left parts all over the track.


Again the first answer still holds. An Accusump might have helped your friend not sure what could have helped you on the street.


An other question-- were both of these problems in FRS or BRZ? Statement was not clear.

He was only seeing 220-230?? Are you guys sure you have the sending unit in a good spot to read? With 5-30 I see 250 all day at the track with an oil cooler.

If you are that concerned that oil starvation is the issue racerx makes an oil pan that holds an extra quart and has baffles.

Where do you have your sending unit? Pics?

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...f4q_ep9-Dc5Cf4

Mine is next to the AC compressor.

My high speed run was down a hill. I suspect the starvation happened at the bottom of the hill, but it seems weird.

Both cars are BRZs. Mine is a 2013, my friend's had a previously supercharged 2014 (we found this out after it failed).

Both of us use the OEM oil temp sensor read via OBDII. As far as I am aware, there isn't an OEM oil pressure sensor. I haven't invested in an aftermarket sensor yet.

The OEM pressure sensor is next to the OEM temp sensor.

My guess is that your oil starvation had nothing to do with the position of the car and more to do with the known excess silicon found in some of the 13 engines. Did you tear the engine down and check the oil passages?

Do you know the OBDII PID for it?

Ahh, I know there are issues with the 2013-2014 engines, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I didn't tear it down, had it repaired under warranty

No, I am running a gauge for it.

So I guess I'm concluding that baffles and/or a dry sump are my only real options if I'm worried about it. And potentially an aftermarket oil pressure sensor and gauge so that I can know when I'm about to blow up

The oil level is above the lower pan, so baffles really don't do a whole lot.

Are you sure about this? Has there not been instances of this happening with later engines?

There's your problem. Where did you see 0w20 recommended for track use?

As sure as I can be without more info or tearing down the engine.
No. It was pretty much restricted to the early 13s. Someplace on here are a pile of pictures of the issue. There was a LOT of chunks of silicone sealant that blocked the channels. The cars with it didn't stand a chance and all that were affected have likely failed by now unless they were hardly driven or never pushed hard enough for the stuff to gather and block the channel.
There have been bearing failures on later engines but they are rare and none have been traced back to this issue.

So, I keep hearing about the silicone issue, and the longer I have my car (2013), the more worried I am that I'm sitting on a time bomb. Is there a range of production dates or serial numbers that were affected by this issue, or has that not been figured out? I've got ~48K miles, run 5W-30 with a Forester oil cooler, and change it at 5K miles. 2-3 track nights/year, and maybe a few autocrosses sprinkled in there. The rest of my driving is pretty sedate - commuting a few miles to work in traffic, running errands, etc. I'm wondering if it'd be worthwhile to drop the pan and see if there's any silicone worms gathered around the pickup screen..?

Reassuring, well for me anyway. Cheers Tcoat!

First off I want to be clear that is only a thesis formed by a few of us and has never been confirmed or even acknowledged in any form by Subaru. Myself and others have followed the failures very closely over the years but we only have the limited data of this forum in which to form that thesis. That said, I am very comfortable in putting my thoughts out there.


Soooo... If I was in your shoes I would not be worried at all by this point in time.
Here is why:
1) The chunks that were found were exactly that, they were very large. They could block the pickup but the more common issue was they seemed to gather at the #4 bearing channel. Most of the failures involved that #4 bearing and since it is the last in line it is more than coincidence. A good and relatively simple check would be to pull the pan and check the pickup although you should be able to see pieces in an oil change if they are that bad.


From one thread:
Oil at pickup
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1445310200


Blocked channel
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1445310217


2) Most of these failures happened at under 50K miles. If you drive the car hard enough the stuff would travel through the system pretty quick and either block the channels or get caught up in the filter or intake. Any of these would reduce the overall oil pressure to a point that you may be alerted but the more likely result is sudden, catastrophic failure. By this point you should have changed to oil enough that unless it is stuck in a channel you would have removed all or most of the chunks.


3) Although I am convinced that this is the main failure mode there were certainly some others. The first tune had some VVT issues which could cause low oil pressure. This were corrected by an ECU update back in late 13. This was a known cause for a couple of failures but I would hope everybody has had the flash done by now since it usually threw CELs like mad. The other cause that was reported several times was low oil levels. Now of course the guys with that issue always swore that they checked it but I have some doubts as to how accurate those statements were. These guys usually came here looking for support for their court cases but never, ever came back to say how they made out. Unfortunately that info my be skewed since we only have one side of the story on each case.


This is my take on it based on the info available and I still maintain that if it is likely to happen it already would have. The reported cases have dropped off to almost nothing in the last year.

Fun fact: for every post I have made on here I have probably read 200. Sort of sad and scary really.



My car is a very early 14 and as such was potently subject to some of the issues of the 13s so I had a vested interest in following this concern.
At 120,000 trouble free (other than my own negligence in replacing my TOB when it started yelling at me) miles I have pretty much dismissed this as a probable failure in my case.

Yeah, obviously the more time passes, the less likely it is that I could get caught by this. Still, there could be that one last piece that had been hanging on. Then again, an asteroid could hit me, too...

I can confirm that even oil showing up on the low end of the dipstick will create erratic oil pressure and starvation. With as much oil as the car holds I didn't think it was a big deal but it caused erratic oil pressure above 6k rpm and drops in oil pressure under hard cornering.

i've done 6 qts numerous times with no issues.

Every time I've had the dealer do an oil change they put 6 quarts on the receipt and it's usually just barely above the full line on the dipstick. It hasn't been a problem.