anybody here use a blow torch on their torsion bars to lower the front end of their car?

Butthurt?

does anybody use the milodon adjustable set screw set up? seems it would be the answer. I always wanted to try one.

If you take a close look at the design of the relief valve in a BB pump, you'll notice that the "window" opening for the relief flow is pretty small....small enough, in fact, that it can't always handle the excess pressure even when wide open. That's why HV pumps with a 60 lb. spring can reach 80+ PSI...excess volume that the relief can't handle equates to excessive pressure.

I have used those, I have a factory cover that someone made into a copy of the adjustable Milidon setup, you could to they drilled and tapped the relief cover, plug, and went from there, if I wasn't so lazy and busy I would learn how to post pictures on here now and take one for you, maybe later this evening. BTW I didn't like the adjustable set ups so I replace them with a stock relief plug and trimmed the bypass springs to get the pressure I wanted

Yep, I learned that lesson years ago when I thought it would be a good idea to run the biggest oil pump possible. I bolted a Milodon pump onto my 426W and ended up with more than 100 psi of pressure. Even with the stock bypass spring the pump was so big that it just generated a ton of oil pressure as all of that oil tried to go somewhere.

Even the HV pump is too big for some engines and the Milodon pump is way too big for most motors. It was designed for funny cars back in the day when they ran really loose bearing clearances. Just goes to prove that bigger isn't always better.

thanks for the reply ,cab.this post has my attn.my new 500 wedge has a 1/2" pickup,hv pump,roller cam.has 80 lbs most of the time.drops to maybe 60 at hot idle.runs great but now I'm scared for my bronze gear. maybe I sould run standard spring ? or maybe standard pump ? street/strip car.6-6500 max

Try a standard volume pump and see what the oil pressure does. You don't really need more than 20 or 30 psi at hot idle and 60 or 70 psi at WOT. If you have more than that then you are putting extra stress on the drive gear. 60 psi at a hot idle is way more than you need. That tells me that you are running super thick oil or your pump is too large. If you have super thick oil in it then the easy thing to do is to change over to a 10-30 or something like that.

I feel lucky... I used the Melling HV pump OOB and got 60-65 hot running and a bit over 20 hot idle with 15W40. Just what I wanted (496 B, .024" ish clearance, full groove bearings, stock oiling to top end). I run a FT cam/steel gear/hardened radiused shaft so the pump load is not a big issue.

With the roller/bronze gear I understand best to keep pump load at a minimum for gear life so standard pump and maybe lighter oil seems to be in order.

I like to see when folks get something right.

Mr. Cab, your understanding of coil springs is correct. Cutting coils off the spring reduces the length of spring wire that is active, so the same deflection of the spring requires the wire to twist more than originally with the longer wire.

Standing back and looking at it, it appears to me that the pressure relief system in the average oil pump is very imprecise. I think there must be a better way. Problem is, we're dealing with a design from am manufacturer that needs to cut costs and the existing system works well enough once you get it down empirically.

Regarding pumping power: Pump Horsepower = Pressure x Volume x a constant. That's set in stone, there's no way of getting around that fact. You can calculate torque by using the equation once you know the rpm and horsepower. This too is all math.

The deal is that bigger pumps and higher pressures require more horsepower to operate. That horsepower comes from the gear drive. So in loading the system with a bigger pump or higher operating pressure, the gear drive needs to provide more power which means it transmits more torque. Torque is what causes the shaft to snap or loads the gears on the gear drive.

At least the B/RB engines have the oil pump at the front. In engines with the distributor/oil pump at the rear, the loading of the oil pump causes the camshaft to deflect torsionally, meaning the rear cylinders see different valve timing events than the fronts. So in these engines, adding a larger pump may cause power loss in two ways.

My Toyota 20R engine was the first engine I had apart that ran the oil pump directly off the crankshaft. What a concept!

On the other hand my friend's Mercedes 280SEL4.5 had the oil pump mounted in the oil pan, run from the crankshaft by a roller (bicycle) chain. The Mercedes of that day used a two part oil pan, top was cast aluminum and there was a bolt-on steel sump. The interior of the aluminum upper pan had fingers that reached up and acted like a crank scraper, also directed the oil into the sump. It was a thing of beauty. The lower third, the steel sump pan, was replaceable in case of damage, also the formed steel sump was more resistant to cracking on impact. Those guys really went all out.

R.