I know the late rollers almost all came with them. Did early magnums use the windage tray? R/T model engines? Pace trucks? Crate engines?

I seem to be in a petty argument on facebook. I'm following the advice in How to Build Big-Inch Mopar Small Blocks by Jim Szilagyi where he said that the factory windage tray was too close to the crank on 360's and not to use them. I'm trying to help someone rebuilding a motor home 360, yes a motor home not a race engine. From all I've ever read none of the magnums ever came with them, period. I figure when they took a serious look at them when they re-engineered the small block for the magnum line they found out that they don't help. (talking production engines, not purpose built race engines for which I know there are better options starting with the milodon tray and going up to crank scrapers.

I know I've read here there some racers make more power without them, with time slips to back it up. I also know opening up the slots and adding more can improve them.

Looking around I don't see any of the crate engines listing windage trays in their specs. What I see instead are upgraded baffled oil pans, and deeper pans to get the rotating assembly away from the oil pool.

Am I wrong? Happy to keep learning if I am.

Chrysler quit using windage trays long before the magnums were thought of. Why? Probably had more to do with money than effectiveness but I am guessing.

Oil control is an area of a lot of aftermarket guesswork. Deep sump doesn't do diddly if your oil return path includes having to go past the crank to get there.

Gale Banks did some research into diff covers and how they affect lubrication that I seriously doubt anyone did similar with engine oil control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XgpmBR-3Fc

Now imagine your crank winging around, the return oil dropping down and getting spun up by the crank. Deep sump? lol, no help. Crank scraper, maybe. Windage tray too close?? How did he come to that conclusion?
Baffles are generally there to keep oil around the pickup, not off the crank.

So when I see some engine oil control "guru" post up a video showing the research he did, similar to the Banks video, I might consider his thoughts. Till then it's just guesswork.

The late roller engines didn't come with windage trays either.

Per what I know, the windage tray was part of the Magnum engine setup along with the HP manifolds, unsilenced air cleaner ( on those years were they exist ), HP cam, dual timing chain setup, sping valve with dampeners... That's at least with Big blocks

This is something I've been wondering about lately too. And aren't there some that argue that they limit low rpm such as at idle oil to the lifters? Is this known as splash?

A crank scraper or a windage screen would be better than a windage tray. The oil needs to get back to the sump as fast as physically possible and a tray slows that process. On factory big block trays I have added louvers and drilled holes to help the oil get to where it needs to be. An aftermarket tray has added louvers for a reason.

as to why Chrysler stopped , ask them , they will tell you , but I'm sure it had a lot to do with cost.

Bill (Grumpy) Jenkins probably did more oil control research than anybody in his time; his conclusion was that a traditional windage tray might keep the sump oil off the spinning crank but it also provides a nearby surface for the oil slung off the rods to ricochet back up into the spinning assembly.

Talking about the early 90s -2000s Magnum 5.2 and Magnum 5.9, not the early 340 and big block magnums.

I have two roller 360's that would disagree, so they started using them again at some point. One I personally pulled from a bone stock church van guarantee no one added that, and the other was pulled from a ramcharger best I recall.

Perhaps some 360-3 truck engines but I've pulled a lot of oil pans off those motors and never saw one.

Late model GM LS stuff uses a full tray much like a Mopar BB. Gotta think GM wouldn't spend the money on a tray if they didn't do anything. NOTHING gets done to any late model engine unless it serves a purpose.....everything is driven by CAFE and EPA. Millions of LS based engines running around......those engineers must know a thing or two?

My 5.9 Magnum engines didn’t have one, my 79 lil red 360 didn’t have one. I have the last year (92) LA that I haven’t taken the pan off yet so don’t know on that one. I read an article from Chrysler (a long time ago) before they started using the tray they did a vidio of the spinning crank at speed it showed what looked like a wool blanket wound around the crank, the oil in suspension. After the tray was installed a lot of the oil was removed, then dyno test where made to prove its effectiveness. 1960 tech but they where smart engineers.

More than once I have read that there is an MPG advantage to running 2 quarts low on engine lube oil.

To gain an EPA advantage the tray would have to have a measureable effect at lower rpm, 1600 rpm and lower.

If you ran a six vehicle convoy style Type IV test, and swapped trays at midpoint, in theory you can detect 0.1 MPG differences.
Two vehicle experimental tests seem to limited to detecting +/- 0.2 MPG

One thing that bothers me is that for 1994-1995 Magnum 5.9 V8 Ram trucks,
Mopar Performance heavily advertised an R/T aftermarket package of

MP PCM requiring Premium gasoline
KN filter element
RT Magnum camshaft
Mid length Tri-Y Mile Leach manufactured headers

Why wasn’t a windage tray also offered if it added 5 hp at 4000 rpm?

The low particle removal efficiency KN filter element allegedly added that much
at least when new before the first cleaning.

Did anyone ever add a vacuum pump/dry sump modification to a Magnum V8 and post a dyno test?

Kevin Johnson from Johnson/Ishihara once claimed he designed a system for the mod motor Ford that gained 50 horse, but Ford said it wasn't economically feasible to use in production.

He also told me he modified a Jeffrey tray for the Slants to gain an additional 17 horsepower.

I asked him to provide some kind of proof to both claims and he refused.

Not cost effective, Same reason they started using the short oil filters in the 80's.

When you produce the number of vehicles a car company produces in a year, saving a nickel on each car really adds up, and its all company profit! The elimination of that $5 windage tray (material cost and labor to bolt it in) can put a pile of money on a 50,000 car production run, into a companies profit margin. Why spend the money to install it at the factory if you can sell it to the customer over the counter for a lot more money?

Do not assume anything a car company did or did not do was for any other reason then to cut a few cents off the production cost for each vehicle. The first few months of a new vehicle production may have gotten by the bean counters, but you can bet the in process version, and most certainly the following versions didn't escape the bean counters input. Gene

I understand bean counter profit picking,
but the regulations for EPA mpg have required buying credits or paying fines if you sell way more pickups and SUVs than small cars.
Tesla now makes eye popping money from selling credits.

If automakers are willing to pay for powered grille shutters to gain a fraction of an MPG on the “Highway” portion of the test at 55 mph,
they would pay for a windage tray even if the gain was only 0.1

I am also thinking of how that Chrysler was willing to change the tapered roller bearing to ball bearings in the 9.25 differential for a tiny gain.

Ricardo Engineering brags about their engine computer model’s ability to tweak engine design.
I wonder if that computer model could run thousands of variations of windage tray design to “evolve” one that works even slightly better.

Has any Hemi 5.7 V8 had a windage tray?

Do any Pentastar V6s have a windage tray?

Magnum engines where installed in trucks, They have a 500 cfm throttle body. Not exactly what most would call "performance" motor. Windage trays only real advantage is at higher rpm's and when the oil gets pushed back into the crank. For a 1/4 mile vehicle yes but not a daily driver for a 4000 pound(at minimum) truck. And the trucks had larger pans back when the LA's where still being made so the oil was farther away from the crank.

This does seem to be an enduring question! I've also seen it discussed in depth and kept an eye on the debate for many years. A regular contributor to this board frequently used to post that the Stock racers never used them because they found they robbed power in testing. I decided to go with a deep baffled pan and a crank scraper and no tray based on the balance of what I'd heard over the years. For a big block use the tray. For a small block, no. YMMV

I just took apart an original never opened up 70 383 HP that came out of a Roadrunner and it had a windage tray, this was just last month. As far as I am concerned that is the only "Magnum" engine worth noting...LOL