Wakesurfing engine damage?

I was thinking about how we load up our boats to lean to one side for wakesurfing and how much damage we could be doing to our engines by doing so. The engines were never designed to be running for long periods of time while leaning; oil pump pickup could starve, oil in the galleys are now flooding parts of engine which may never have been meant to be flooded, areas being starved because the oil can't reach reach.
I just thinking how much long term damage we could be doing to our engines by running them in this manner.
I have seen a blown engine from somebody who had let their engine oil get low and ended up starving the oil pump and ultimately blew the motor.

I'm gonna venture to guess that the boat companies are going to eventually not cover warrantees due to wakesurfing just because of this factor. It would be really easy for them to figure out. Engine information has all the history of engine; run time, high RPM, etc. All that would be needed is to see how long it had been run at specific rpms for long periods of time.

Any thoughts?

Chris
Get the Grip you Deserve
www.wakejunky.com

The only place that'll flood on these small block chevys is the Valve cover area, even then there are drain holes on the lower side so the oil will still drain back into the oil pan. The highside valve cover won't hold more than 1/2 quart before it starts draining. If you're running the fulll 5 quarts, I don't think oil pump starvation would be a problem. Even if it did become a problem, the oil pressure light would come on.

The engine ECU is more basic than what you're describing, it doesn't log history. It may log high values, high speed, high RPM, and flag conditions "20 seconds w/no oil pressure." There simply isn't enough memory in the ECU for it to become a Data Logger. If this were actually a problem, it'd be up to the manufactures to correct their design flaw, rather than offer a warranty that doesn't cover, say, "2000 rpm for more than 3 minutes." Because if they started adding in claws like that, then effectively, the engine doesn't have a warranty.




(Message edited by yosquire on May 19, 2006)

From the basic education I have on engine internals, I don't see an issue with the GM blocks from oil starvation. The GM engines are used in a variety of machinery that is not level much of the time without problems.

What about the old CC 2001's engines that were the Ford 351? Would these setup's work as well as the Chevy's? Or would we be running the risk of Flooding/Starvation?

You're not tilting the motor that much. I would think that an engine in an off-road application would be tilted much worse than a boat while surfing. If you're getting more than a few degrees off of level while surfing, I want to see pics!...........

You are going a lot slower while surfing anyway, so the engine will not be pumping the oil out of the pan as fast. I'd just keep the oil topped off.

I guess you guys have never been to the Pro Modified, Sprint or Outlaw races. Those cars run at an angle for most of the race, plus they also just go around and around an oval which slings all the oil to one side. A lot of the engines in these cars are running stock pans and oil pickups.

It's really not that big of a deal on any domestic motor with exception of maybe the AMC series of smallblocks and I don't know of anyone wakesurfing with an AMC engine in the old boat.

If it were a problem it would require nothing more than a pan swap with more baffling and problem solved. In my rockcrawler I used to run a stock ZZ4, it once rolled and it landed on its side and ran for over a half hour before I could bend all the wreckage back to get to the kill switch. It finally ran out of gas and is now running in a truggy.

The oil pick up in a GM small block dang near touches the bottom of the pan. you'd have to be REALLY low on oil to starve the pump.

Bocephus hit the nail on the head.

What's a Truggy?

I would say your SAN was tilted less than 20 degrees when we were wakesurfing at Shasta?

A truggy is a cross between a prerunner truck and a dune buggy.

This is The Truggy!

lots of people live in the mountains and have to drive up and down steep inclines on a daily basis, you never hear of an engine failure because of that

(Message edited by pickle311 on May 20, 2006)

Not enough angle to present an oil supply problem. And those Modified, Sprint, Outlaw racers that you speak of are not running stock pick-ups and pans. They're not going to risk 700+ hp engines to stock oiling. They run "dry sump" systems or at least articulating pick ups and baffled pans that control where the oil is being directed to.