I wholeheartedly endorse dry sump systems. They have many other benefits beside just keeping a constant supply of oil - deaerating the oil being the biggest one. Expensive but worth it when used in the intended environment.
Photography by J.G. Pasterjak
The 3.5-liter Toyota 2GR-FE that’s going into our MR2–with its forged bottom end, roller rockers, aluminum block and high-winding nature–is a heck of an engine despite its pedestrian Camry origins.
[How to turn an MR2 into a Ferrari Dino (sort of) | Project Toyota MR2 Turbo]
If it has a weak point–and even this is a bit of a stretch–it can tend to drop oil pressure in long, right-hand corners.
Alex Wilhelm at Wilhelm Raceworks did a fantastic analysis of the 2GR’s oil pressure tendencies and devised some proven methods for combating the pressure drop. We’ll be implementing them on our engine before we even drop it into our SW20 chassis.
We should also note that we’ve gotten a lot of comments along the lines of, “Didn’t you guys blow up like a dozen Camry motors back when you were trying to build a Camry for autocross?”
And the answer is, “Yes, we did.”
But the longer answer is that was also a different engine–an earlier 1GR V6–that kept drying out the bearings whenever we so much as looked at it funny. The evolutionary 2GR fixed a lot of the inherent problems with that earlier engine with a larger, deeper sump and other revised oil control methods. We aim to take those measures even further with a few simple upgrades.
So let’s dig in.
With the lower oil pan removed–there are 18 fasteners with 10mm heads–you can see the hardware that secures the upper oil pan in place. You’ll need a 12mm socket for those. There are seven bolts inside the upper oil pan, and the rest are located on the outside of the pan.
Our engine’s new upper pan came from a Sienna fitted with a factory oil cooler. In the shot with both pans, note the oil cooler ports above the filter housing on the Sienna pan. The factory oil cooler was cooled via a coolant circuit, but we’ll use a standard air-cooled cooler in this application.
All the fasteners that come off our engine get an overnight bath in CRC’s Evapo-Rust. It strips the oxidization off the bolts and makes them look nearly new.
Since the upper and lower oil pans don’t use conventional gaskets, your best bet is to follow the factory’s lead here. Toyota Formed-in-Place Gaskets material 103 is an amazing sealant that you can get from most Toyota or Lexus dealers, or online, for about $20 per tube.
With a good (but not too good; you know how Toyotas are when you use too much pan sealant) bead of FIPG on the upper pan, it was ready to bolt back into place.
The lower pan needed a bit of wire wheel time to remove all the old gasket material so we could ensure a solid seal.
We’re adding a Wilhelm Raceworks oil pan baffle to our stock pan, which features additional walls and one-way flaps to keep oil at the pickup tube. It should drop right into the pan with little fuss, but as you can see from the hammer marks, our pan required a bit of reshaping after what looked like a previous attempt at overly deep parking. Once we pounded out the divot in the bottom of the pan, the baffle dropped home cleanly.
If the previous owner of your engine was better at parking than the previous owner of our engine, the only modification you’ll have to make to your stock pan is to slightly bend this stock baffle so the Wilhelm baffle drops in. It can easily be done with a pair of pliers or even by hand.
Time to apply FIPG and slip the new pan into place. The instructions call for a couple extra beads of sealant at key areas, so make sure to read them thoroughly before applying.
All together, tightened up and ready to go in the car. If you’re doing this operation on a car, make sure to give the FIPG a full 24 hours to cure before filling the sump with oil.
Before the FIPG on the lower pan fully cures, though, you’ll want to take it back off and do this step. Or, if you were smart enough to avoid watching Game 2 of the World Series while you undertook this project, do this operation before you even put the upper pan on.
Since we'd be running an extra half quart of oil in the sump, we knew the PCV system would be working overtime blowing oil out of the valve covers. Adding an air/oil separator would ensure that oil wouldn't be blown right back in the intake and burned up. And to save us from having to constantly drain that separator tank, we’d just allow it to drain directly back into the oil pan. So we added a -6AN bulkhead fitting to the flat area next to the dipstick tube that we’d use for oil drain-back.
This adapter from Wilhelm Raceworks allows for the use of standard AN fittings on the factory oil cooler ports, so we ran lines to a finned oil cooler. It bolted right onto the factory cooler ports using O-ring seals.
All buttoned up and ready to go in the MR2, our 2GR-FE should have oiling well under control for many worry-free laps.
I wholeheartedly endorse dry sump systems. They have many other benefits beside just keeping a constant supply of oil - deaerating the oil being the biggest one. Expensive but worth it when used in the intended environment.
In reply to kb58 :
That, and I bet it never gets old bragging about how you have a dry sump setup. 
In reply to kb58 :
Not trying to negate those wise words but I suspect the benefits vary from car to car. I've run my 1200 for the past 33 years and I've never had an issue. As mentioned some cars I've seen munch the bearings the minute you put sticky tires on them.
kb58 said:I wholeheartedly endorse dry sump systems. They have many other benefits beside just keeping a constant supply of oil - deaerating the oil being the biggest one. Expensive but worth it when used in the intended environment.
The only 2GR-FE dry sump applications we could find were basically one-offs. Really the engine is fairly robust, we're just taking some extra precautions since you can really never be too careful when it comes to oiling. But even in Alex's testing, while he was seeing dropoffs in right hand cornering, the pressure still wasn't falling below what I'd consider to be dangerous territory. So the baffles, an additional half quart in the sump, and an extrenal cooler which will provide more capacity (and maybe an Accusump if there's space?) should be all the insurance we need to keep our bearings juicy.
What's the big splined (?) protrusion with the square drive on the bottom in the first picture?
Edit: I did some googling and it appears to be the oil filter housing? I didn't know that Toyota did filter cartridges like that for their more run of the mill cars.
Slight tangent, but fresh on my mind after talking to a friend. The 2GR in the Evora GT specifically has an oil pan with trap doors that are rubber/plastic. Maintenance schedule has you drop the pan every 2 years/18k miles to change those doors for new ones.
Our sanctioning body penalizes add on dry sump systems so we are left with limited solutions. Glad to see there there's an off-hand recommendation for an Accusump. We pay a much smaller penalty for the Accusump. If anyone has any recommendations for better oil control for the Ford Essex (Canada) V6 (2003 Mustang) we'd be very interested.
fatallightning said:Slight tangent, but fresh on my mind after talking to a friend. The 2GR in the Evora GT specifically has an oil pan with trap doors that are rubber/plastic. Maintenance schedule has you drop the pan every 2 years/18k miles to change those doors for new ones.
Moroso also has a part# for a 2GR lower oil pan with what looks like metal trap doors, but it looks like it hasn't been in stock in forever.
In reply to Colin Wood :
Well since it absolutely saved my engine - twice - due to unnoticed oil leaks, maybe a little. I don't own the car any longer, so I'm not bragging when recommending one if it's financially possible. I pieced one together myself for Midlana, fabricating my own pump mount; that was about the only true custom part.
Back when I ran a Datsun 1200, I made my own pan with one-way doors and had no oiling issues, even on slicks. I did though, witness another 1200 seize up its engine in about two seconds during an autocross, but it may have been down a quart to start with.
Displaying 1-10 of 26 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums
You'll need to log in to post.
