There’s horsepower hidden in them there pans…

A well designed oil pan won’t act as just a passive component of your engine. Rather than just sitting and collecting your oil, a good oil pan will actively help you keep the correct amounts of oil everywhere it should be, keep oil out of places it shouldn’t be, and even help you make more horsepower while it’s at it. Our friends at Canton Racing design oil pans with advanced features that do all of these things, and they recently put up this helpful post on their website revealing the “why” and “how” of these features. Below is a brief overview. 

Baffling Systems – The baffling inside an oil pan is there to serve one main purpose: to keep the oil pump pick-up tube covered at all times no matter how extreme the forces are pushing the oil away. Additionally, most of Canton’s oil pans feature trap door baffles and oil runners that make it easy for oil to get to the pickup, but make it impossible for it to move away from the sump once it’s there.

Windage Trays – There is a hurricane-force wind storm going on inside your crank case caused by the constant motion of your rotating assembly, and this wind storm is constantly churning up your oil supply. A windage tray helps the oil coming off the crank get back into the sump without being caught up in the turbulence, as well as keeping the oil already in the sump from sloshing up onto the crank because of motion.

Canton offers this louvered windage tray as an additional piece that can be bolted to the main caps for use in an oil pan that does not have a windage tray.

Recovery Pouches, or “Power Pouch” – A recovery pouch does just what it sounds like: it recovers oil being slung off the crank and sends it directly into the sump. This helps to “thin out” the atmosphere of the crankcase, which allows the crank to spin more easily and produce more horsepower. Canton’s Jeff Behuniak tells us, “The power pouch keeps the oil from hitting the side of the pan and sloshing back into the crank. The power pouch is a great feature to cut down windage and free up some of the power that is robbed by an oil soaked crank.”

The “power pouch” is the area between the two indentations, which catches the oil as it is flung off the crank and quickly moves it away, creating more power by freeing up the crank from access drag.

Crank Scrapers – The crank scraper serves a similar purpose to the recovery pouch, but does it in a different way. It catches the oil spray as it comes off the rotating assembly, and helps free up horsepower by thinning the crank case atmosphere. “The crank scraper is a great feature to free up the crank,” says Behuniak. “However, it is a feature that can only be used on motors that don’t have a main stud girdle.”

All these features give you better oil control for better longevity and even more horsepower – it’s a win-win. For more info on Canton’s oil pans, and to see what they offer for your specific application, head on over to their website or give them a call at (203) 481-9641 to personally talk with one of their techs.