Motorsport Plumbing Systems: Materials
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Materials
04.52
| 00:00 | In most cases, the plumbing for our oil lines will be conveying oil alone, much like the rest of the plumbing systems we cover in this course and their corresponding fluids. The exception to this is the crankcase ventilation system where the majority of the fluid is a mixture of the blow by gases from inside the engine with some amount of oil along with it. Regardless, the oil being conveyed will be hot and pressurised, so internally, the usual requirements of chemical resistance, heat resistance and strength apply here. |
| 00:32 | Externally, the same story also applies. |
| 00:35 | The plumbing needs to be strong and resistant to abrasion, external heat sources and chemicals that could be spilt on it. |
| 00:42 | General corrosion resistance is also required as well as some amount of flexibility in the plumbing between components mounted to the chassis like the oil coolers, relocated filters or dry sump tanks and components like the dry sump pump mounted to the engine or simply the engine itself. |
| 01:00 | Remember that for this module we're specifically talking about the material of the plumbing itself, not the components. In unmodified factory configurations, we'll commonly see a mixture of hard lines and flexible hoses just like for fuel and coolant plumbing. |
| 01:17 | Hard lines are most commonly mild steel of some description, as it's cheap, but also very strong and up to the task. The issue with this which should be obvious by now is that these lines are relatively heavy and although they're most commonly zinc plated for corrosion resistance, this tends to wear off eventually causing the lines to corrode. |
| 01:38 | The hose is usually simple reinforced nitrile rubber for factory flexible oil lines. |
| 01:44 | The same SAE J30 standard applies to our fuel hoses with R6 and R7 hose being unsuitable for oil systems as they only have a 50 psi rating. |
| 01:56 | Around 10 psi of fuel pressure is required per 1000 RPM of engine speed which, gives us a rough idea of the amount of pressure our plumbing needs to withstand. |
| 02:08 | The actual oil pressure when the oil is cold can end up being considerably higher as well and it's not uncommon to see the oil pressure exceed 100 psi if the engine is revved high enough immediately after a cold start. |
| 02:22 | R9 hose has a 100 psi rating so it can be used with our engine oil and this also has better permeation resistance. This works great in the majority of automotive applications, but like we've discussed with the fuel and coolant plumbing, with high temperatures and abrasive environments seen in motorsport, these hoses tend to degrade and deteriorate quicker than we'd like, leading to oil leaks and therefore safety risks and the risk of damage to our engine. High end OEM, motorsport and performance aftermarket setups will also tend to use a mixture of hard lines and flexible hose, but in some cases, flexible hose is used exclusively for simplicity. While it's possible to use zinc plated steel hard lines in motorsport, we tend to favour aluminium, copper, nickel or stainless steel lines. |
| 03:10 | The choice between these comes down to weight and expense while generally stainless holds up the best but is harder to bend and flare. Again, we'll cover the comparisons between these materials in a dedicated module later in the course. |
| 03:26 | For flexible hose, the addition of an inner and outer braid offers an extra level of protection and insurance for more demanding applications. |
| 03:34 | While CPE hose works great for oil plumbing, as usual, PTFE hose is really the gold standard for flexible oil lines in motorsport applications in regards to reliability and durability, it just comes with a higher price tag. |
| 03:48 | Again, we'll come back to this in more detail later in the course. |
| 03:52 | That's all we really need to understand for now, so let's summarise the key points we covered in this module. |
| 03:57 | Oil plumbing material requirements are very similar to that of our fuel system with the key differences being that the oil pressure and temperature will generally be higher than fuel, but the chemical resistance requirements aren't quite so demanding. |
| 04:13 | Our oilplumbing system is usually a combination of hard lines and flexible hose. |
| 04:18 | The hard lines typically being aluminium, copper, nickel or stainless steel with the usual compromises of cost, strength, weight, corrosion resistance and ease to work with between each option. |
| 04:31 | While flexible hoses are usually SAE J30 R9 spec nitrile rubber in OEM applications, for motorsport we'll most likely be changing this to some form of braided line, potentially CPE based but PTFE is usually ideal depending on the situation. |
