Turbo oil return sump plate idea/question

[djb25]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been doing some maintenance work on my turbocharged 2.7l and got to thinking about the turbo drain line. Mine runs to a stock sump plate that I half-assed modified. It sort of works, I guess?

A better solution has been on my to-do list for a while.

It seems like a straight-forward solution would be a deeper sump plate combined with an extended oil pump pickup.

But I’ll confess that I’m not sure how this would impact engine oiling. Would this work, or would extending the oil pickup cause problems? It looks like the sump is already the lowest part of the engine, and these are dry-sump engines, so I don’t think it would be an issue, but I don’t really know enough to say with any certainty.

It does seem like having the pickup closer to the drain line would solve the oil return issues that some people have, without the need for an electric scavenge pump or fitting a mechanical pump.

[sigchuck]

There was a member that made a run of deeper sump plates (billet I think) with an AN fitting provision on the side of the plate. I think it’s very similar to what Jerry Woods put on turbo charged motors. I read a number of threads in this method but never saw anyone mention extending pickup (maybe because 930 already has bigger pump?). There was a guy with a turbo charged SC that successfully returned a k27 oil line to sump plate using a banjo bolt - I think his user name is scottrx7. Not sure if SC pump is bigger than 2.7, but I thinks it’s smaller than the 930 pump.

[djb25]

Yep, I’ve seen those threads and the various ways people have used the sump plate as an oil return for the turbo.

I was thinking that if the entire plate was deeper, the pickup could be slightly extended and you could eliminate the problem with the turbo oil outlet being being just barely above the sump plate.

[stownsen914]

Lots to consider, but you it might be a lot of work for limited benefit. One risk I’d foresee is if you extended the sump enough to get a gravity drain for the turbo, you might have a ground clearance issue. Extended sumps on VWs are known to hit things, and you might not know this until your engine has an oiling issue.

[66cal912]

Did your 2.7 motor have a drive off the left front of the cam housing to drive a smog pump, or was the smog pump belt driven off the crank pulley on that motor? If you have any sort of cam drive off the left front cam housing, it seems like it would make sense to adapt a 930 scavenge pump to that and then just get the required plumbing to route the oil back to the oil tank or down to the engine case sump. Just an idea, I see the scavenge pumps every so often for sale on the pelican parts sales page and on ebay for reasonable prices.