External Oil lines

[thebossdj]

Hi fellow gear heads.

I have a narrow case 350 with the top of the chain guard hood taken clean off.. Anyways I have always wanted to make a Formula 3 style external oil line motor with remote float bowl on the frame style roadster. Because this set of cases is not close to stock anymore I figure why not put a couple holes in the cases.

Does anyone know where and or what size for putting in oil lines? Any advice on what to do? Also have given some thought to putting a line from the Cam cap to the oil pump cover. Advice on this is very welcome. This bike will be used for blasting on public roads and looking cool in my house during the winter. Thanks for the help.

Cheers & Bevel Gears

B


ps. I did a search of external oil lines but could not find a thread to exactly what I am looking to do.
pss. It is always awesome to read the amazing about of knowledge that people share with each other on here. The Mach 1 to Mk3 lineage topic was great.

[Ventodue]

We had a little discussion - with pictures! - not long ago on Ducati.ms about the nature and purpose of the external oil lines :
http://www.ducati.ms/forums/14-vintage/ ... lines.html

Quick resumé:

Over the years, there were more minor variations than you might think . But essentially the lines were:
1) 1 or 2 drains out of the head on the right hand side to stop oil accumulating in the valve chambers (especially the exhaust).
2) A feed to the cam bearing on the left side of the engine.

External lines were used right from the start, i.e. on the Marianna.

Now I'll leave it for the experts to reply!

Craig

[thebossdj]

Thanks for the info and pIcs!

Hope some of you fellas pipe up on any advice you might have.


Lucky to have this forum plus the wealth of knowledge. Keep sharing.

[double diamond]

My take on external oil lines: The lines that replace the standard hard line with banjo bolts are to drain the head. I heard variously that the reason is that when the oil isn’t yet fully warmed up it doesn’t drain from the head as quickly as necessary and tends to fill up the intake and exhaust valve chambers. Another is the high RPM filling and that the lower bevel bearing gets too much oil when all the oil from the head is draining through the bevel tube. As far as routing the drain lines, I’ve seen any number of locations, usually into the timing gear chamber. The primary gear doesn’t need additional oil; it’s pressure fed through the crankshaft. The lower bevel bearing will still get a certain amount of oil from the feed in the end of the cam draining through the bevel tube. So basically you just want to return the oil to the sump and the shortest possible route for the drain lines will be the least problematic. I’ve seen a flattrack Ducati that had drains tapped into the left side of the head because flattrackers are only leaned to the left and the head doesn’t drain well when leaned to the left. As far as the external pressure line, the picture in the Ducati.ms post shows the location of the timing cover port pretty well. The oil galley in the timing cover is routed to the upper rear of the cover, then turns to the left, across the cases then up the cylinder, through the oil passage dowel and into the head (the oil galleys are depicted in the Ducati service manual). External lines tap into the oil galley at the upper rear timing cover (there’s actually a little notch in the cover at this location). The line then re-enters the head, usually directly into the cam bearing cap, though there could be other approaches. The SC heads shown in the Ducati.ms post is a very different castings but the same oil line routing probably could be done on a standard head. On the stock bearing cap, the oil passage is a hole drilled in the rear of the cam cap that aligns with the oil passage in the head. It might be possible to locate a fitting on the top of the head and drill a hole in the cam cap 90 degrees CCW from the original. The original oil galleys must be blocked off when external oil lines are installed. The Ducati.ms posting also shows a drain line on the tach drive. This was because oil in the upper bevel chamber would make its way into the tach drive and get pumped up the cable and fill up the tachometer with oil! As I recall, the tach drive cables have little holes in the metal ends to drain oil, but if these were sealed with silicone to prevent the oil from draining all over the right side of the engine, the oil would just get pumped up the cable and enter the tach. So the zerk fitting originally intended to grease the tach drive was removed and the hole employed as a drain. Matt