Oil Pan Baffles?

[third_edition]

I watched this YouTube Movie last night about the Flathead V8 and it's story. It was a good show, but they talked about some of the problems Ford encountered with the 1932 Engine, one of which was oil control.

Apparently (according to the show), the early V8 would suffer from oil starvation when cornering hard (oil would slosh up the side of the pan) leading to a large number of engine failures.

Ford rectified this by introducing a new pan which, according to the show, had baffles for oil control.

My question, I just pulled the pan off my 39' Flathead and... you guessed it, no baffles.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what went down over the early years of the Flathead to resolve this oil control problem and should there be baffles in my oil pan?

thanks,
George

[STAN WHITE]

I talked to Ed Bingly about that, I had him do both of my oil pans. The baffels that he insatlled in ths pans kept the oil in the deepest part of the pan. It was a piece of thin gage sheet metal. He welded it to the sides of the pan which keep the oil from moving forward or to the sides. Stan

[51 MERC-CT]

Maybe there are some with "baffles" but other than windage trays I don't recall seeing any.
Perhaps a relocation and re-design of the pickup tube/filter assy. corrected the problem.

[petehoovie]

I think the design of the oil pump is involved here and how it picks up the oil. I know that the original pan in my '34 had baffles (windage tray?) to accommodate the original oil pump. Needless to say, this tray would have to be remover to accommodate a new Mellings replacement pump....


1934 original oil pump and pan>

[DavidG]

The initial design of the oil pump did not have the tube running to the little sump in the low point of the pan shown on Pete's '34 pump and there was no sump cast into the aluminum oil. But contrary to that story, the tray in the pan had two baffles. But the baffles ran from side to side and pump starvation occurred in two circumstances. Hard left turns was one (but not right hand turns as the pump was located in the left rear corner) and the other was long severe angle downhill runs where the oil eventually got past the baffles. Three changes were made to address the problem. A sump was cast into the center of the oil pan, a pickup tube was added as in the photo above, and the dipstick was relocated from the right side (in the block casting near the bell housing) to the center of the upper left side of the revised oil pan. A further later change raised the "L" mark on the dipstick by one inch.

[Tim Ayers]

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It's not uncommon to find a pan that the baffles have been removed by a previous mechanic for various reasons only known to them. LOL!

[Kube]

Originally Posted by Tim Ayers

It's not uncommon to find a pan that the baffles have been removed by a previous mechanic for various reasons only known to them. LOL!

I have found many 39 - 40 pans with the baffle removed. This was typically done when installing a later model oil pump. The later model pump had the sump in a different place than the stock pump.
I ALWAYS put a (missing) baffle back in. I have personally witnessed and subsequently repaired a few Fords having issues with oil pressure when going up steep hills and / or cornering.

[Tim Ayers]

Originally Posted by Kube

I have found many 39 - 40 pans with the baffle removed. This was typically done when installing a later model oil pump. The later model pump had the sump in a different place than the stock pump.
I ALWAYS put a (missing) baffle back in. I have personally witnessed and subsequently repaired a few Fords having issues with oil pressure when going up steep hills and / or cornering.

Yep. It was put there for a good reason.

[Kube]

Originally Posted by Tim Ayers

Yep. It was put there for a good reason.

Tim, As you and I well know, ol' Henry was not in the habit of spending money unless it was absolutely necessary.