Oil Sump pickups: Lip Seal block vs Rope Seal block

[garyeanderson]

I took these photos a while ago, probably when CeeJay posted the subject of the modified pans. I guess this should have gone along with that topic but I didn't put the photos up then. Any way the photos are of an early and late sump sump pickup tubes. I am not sure what Ford was thinging when they changed the pickup design when the new six bolt cranks with the new Lip seal was brought out. My guess is it was cheaper to produce and the average driver in a 1500 pre-crossflow wouldn't have any problems and they were more than likely right. But as you can see in the pictures the rope seal pickup sits on the bottom of the sump and is held up a bit by the bent tabs. It would appear that it would still be worikng fine if the level of the sump was all the way down to 1/4 inch. The new screen style pickup on the other hand will start sucking air when the level is nearly 13/16 of an inch. Now think about what actually hjappens when you start to take a corner at a good clip and you will start to understand why it starts to suck air.

so on with the photos

Rope seal pickup


Lip seal pickup


Rope Seal pickup is canted over but with pickup in the pickup at the bottom of the pan it conforms to the flat bottom and sits on the bent tabs on the bottom of the pickup.


There are two lines drawn in the photo of this lip seal pickup photo. The Pink line is where the pickup will sit in the bottom of the oil pan when its installed, the green line is where the the pickup will start sucking air.


Both oil pans are the same depth at 6.75 inches

[rgh0]

The tube in both styles of pick up should be about 1 diameter from the bottom of the pan. The major problem with the later style pickup is that it sits in the RH side of the pan not in the middle like the earlier one.

With the later pressed in tube it is possible to drive it in to far. There is a very small lip in the socket in the block which defines the insertion distance but its easy to drive it past this point if not careful. Also if the tube is bent to much towards the centre of the pan it will be to far of the bottom.

There were 2 styles of earlier pickup ( at least in Australian ford 1500 engines) and if buying second hand components you need to understand them as mixing the parts leads to problems.

style 1 - has a short retaining nut and ferrule that fits into the end of the tube to seal to the block. Leaving the ferrule out results in the nut bottoming out befroe the tube seals properly and air leaks preventing oil being sucked up

style 2 - has a longer retaining nut with an unthreaded portion on its end and no ferrule. putting in the ferrule with this retaining nut results in only a couple of threads engaging and you risk the pick up vibrating loose

I have seen both types with the tabbed lock washer under the retaining nut and a few of the second type with no lock washer. Not sure if at some stage Ford left out the tabbed lock washer or if this had been left off by earlier engine rebuilders

cheers
Rohan

[garyeanderson]

Hi Rohan

The ferrule that you describe I have seen both in the U.S.
In the dave bean catalog is is described as an "olive"
All of this is good info for those that want to delve into there engines. It would seem that there are fewer of the early style pickups in the twin cam as the change to the screen type pickup occureded at or around LP7764 Twin cams produced in the March to June 1967 time frame could have either type accordingto the invoice dates on the Sports Car World spreadsheet on Elans.

Gary

p.s. -The depth of the pickup was (in my opinion) was dictated by the oils of the day where the sludge would build up in the bottom of the pan and block the pickup if it wasn't at a sufficient height. The early 50's to the early 60's Coventry Climax was using a floating (semi floating?) pickup to keep it in the "good oil". With todays oil I don't think the sludge build up is a problem and would tend to keep the pickup as low as possible without blocking the the early style of pickup by the bottom of the oil sump.