How Oil Temperature Affects Oil Flow In An Engine

Companies like Moroso Performance receive tech questions all the time about the company’s products. After modernizing the flow bench that Dick Moroso originally built for himself to test his company’s products, the folks at Moroso Performance are utilizing it to create educational videos for its customers. Product and technical engineer Scott Hall from Moroso uses it in some videos to show you how oil temperature affects oil flow in an engine.

Moroso’s test stand has been fitted with a Racepak IQ3 data acquisition unit to data-log parameters such as oil temperature, oil pressure (before and after the filter), gallons per minute, and crankcase vacuum. It also has control over the vacuum levels to see how an oil pump performs under different amounts of vacuum, and it can also control the temperature of the oil in the 10-quart oil tank. The staff also fitted it with a kilowatt meter that converts that measurement into horsepower, and all of this data can be downloaded to a laptop for review.

Hall explained that the company’s first oil test stand video was made as a result of a Facebook post about a Top Sportsman racer whose dry sump oil system overflowed at race track after the engine warmed up. Hall noted that the most common questions they receive concern oil levels, and that the answer to them often lies in their oil temperature.

In this video, Hall shows that 80-degree oil flows at about 4 gallons per minute at a pump speed of 1,250 rpm. At 100 degrees, the flow rate rises about 1 gallon per minute, and at 140 degrees, oil flow is at 5.8 gallons per minute. With an oil temperature of 160 degrees, oil flow is 7.0 gallons per minute, or nearly double the flow of the oil at 80 degrees.

Oil temperature can make a huge difference on how the oil travels throughout your engine, and Hall plans to create follow up videos to answer more questions based on comments from the first video.