I've got the pan off my motor. 232ci Slant, 8 quart deep pan that I run 5 in, and a Johnson-Ishihara scraper and a windage tray.

Is the tray really doing anything?

Thanks!

In theory they keep the slosh from the bottom of the pan off of the crank. Kevin Johnson from IJ could probably give you a better answer.

Where did the windage tray come from? If it's designed to work with the scraper and also from Ishihara-Johnson, it should stay together.

Did OEM /6 Mopar engines ever come with trays? I'm into small blocks.

In some cases it seems like an OEM style solid tray, like on a Mopar small block, can trap oil draining from above and out of bearings between the crank & tray and the openings aren't big enough. It does help isolate the oil in the pan from the crank windage. Mopar racer Ed Hamburger from the '70's & '80's originally took the OEM tray and opened up the "drain" louvers and stamped extra louvers in the tray. Since then racers experimented with scrapers and scraper/tray combos using solid and screened trays.

isshihara-Johnson Crank Scrapers

In most cases Engineering said not to use a tray if the rotating parts were 6” or greater from the oil level.

Measure your running oil level.

Hard to say without running tests and gathering real data. With a deep pan and a low oil level I doubt that the tray and scraper are doing much, but they probably aren't hurting anything either.

But they also give a surface close to the spinning crank for tossed-off oil to rebound off of and cause windage resistance.

Yes, that is the debate. Which is why a bunch of people switched over to screens or diamond punched trays. I just put a huge box pan on the BBF dyno mule that I'm building. I figure bigger is better when it comes to oil pans.

Myron, it's a Mike Jeffrey copy of the old Direct Connection Slant tray, which is pretty close to a 340 tray. Mike himself said they probably didn't make a whole lot of difference.

Mike also made the pan which is baffled.

Last time I talked to Johnson he was claiming he had made some big improvements in Mike's tray, but wouldn't sell me one. When I questioned his gains he had a melt down and I haven't talked to him since.

Thank you all for your input. I think I will pull the tray.

Yeah, Johnson sometimes gets into "sales guy" mode and talks up his stuff a little too much. It isn't magic.