Having spoken to a few guys who have installed zetecs it seems that its quite common to simply chop the std sump and many dont even bother baffling it for road use. Is this the generally accepted route with the zetec?

Having had my duratec sump off today its already fitted with a windage tray about 3/4 the way up, the pickup sits squarely in the middle of the well which is pretty much square in shape. It also has a couple of baffles in what will be the fore and aft direction. It looks like it just needs a couple in the lateral directions. This should be relatively simple as the windage tray is steel so baffles can be welded to the bottom of that.

The other good thing with the std fwd sump is that it naturally sits level with the bottom of the bellhousing, so no chopping needed.

Another point to note is that the sump is almost full to level with the block when its full of oil as the crank is entirely up within the block on the duratec. So the volume of oil around the pick up is pretty high at all times.

What would you do? Baffle the normal sump, chop and baffle a std rwd sump (similar to a pinto one but alloy), make a steel sump or buy one?

David

[Edited on 23/3/09 by flak monkey]

As you already have it and it sounds a simple enough job I'd go for adding some extra baffles to the std FWD sump.

I chopped my Focus sump off so it was level with the type 9 gearbox.

The sump had the shallow bit at the back where the original exhaust went through. Much the same as old rwd engines where they had to jump over the X member...

I boxed the sump using that as a baffle.. drilling big holes in it and leaving spaces at the bottom where it met the new flat bottom.

Here you can see the weld line where the original metal is which remains inside.

Seeing as my engine came from a ST170 Focus and not having any baffles, whats the point? Turning round to rwd??

Its dead easy to add some while your chopping the sump.

The windage tray just stops oil splashing up onto the crank and slowing it down so has nothing to do with baffling, well, in a fwd set up anyway.

In rwd the tray may help stop oil surging up the side of the block during big cornering aka track day corners.

If its peace of mind your after, while its off add some!

Just spoken to Darren at GTS - knowing he has done a few duratec installs now - and he is of the opinion that I really should be fitting a raceline sump as duratecs are really prone to oil surge.

Having said that, looking at the raceline and SBDev designs below there doesnt seem to be an awful lot of lateral baffling in them anyway, it mostly seems to be longitudinal....