Dealing with oil starvation in corners: racing and autocrossing

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The concept of oil starvation in corners is based on the idea that cornering g-forces can slosh the oil in the pan to one side and uncover the pipe that is the inlet to the oil pump. When that happens the oil pump sucks in air and stops delivering pressurized oil to all of the bearings. Bearings need a good supply of oil under pressure to live. The 2zz engine is designed to handle extended cornering loads in a car with a stock suspension and normal street tires. When you improve the cornering ability of a car with suspension mods and sticky tires you can exceed the ability of the oil pan to handle cornering forces without uncovering the oil pump inlet tube pickup. To make up for this you can get an oil pan made for high cornering forces (baffled oil pan), and/or get an oil pressure accumulator (like Accusump) or if you are serious, go for a dry-sump oil system. Slightly over-filling the oil on a stock engine can help, but that is tricky because over filling can easily cause big problems due to oil aeration by the crank.

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