We have been running the Roger Clark Motorsport 4-Stage Dry Sump oiling system on our Pikes Peak car since 2020.  There is certainly a lot involved with making the switch to a Dry Sump Oiling System, and it can be a bit more difficult to get it working properly than it might first appear.  Fortunately, we were able to work with Roger Clark Motorsport and get their insights to get our Dry Sump working to its full potential.

Through that process, we made a few videos documenting that process, and we have now collected that information here!

Not only that, but thorugh the years, we have had a few other conversation about Dry Sump Oiling Systems and those conversations are collected here as well.

Hopefully this will help to answer any questions that you might have about why you would want to put a Dry Sump on your Subaru, what the benefits of that are, and what you would need to do to get it working properly once installed.

If you still have any questions at all after going through all of this, you can select the "Consult" option at the top of the page, and we will schedule a time to answer any other questions that you have.

When we started to look at options to improce the oiling system on our Pikes Peak car, we first started out by looking at the different options for aftermarket or modified pans, we also started to get a picture of where those pans were helpful, and the point at which it might actually be best to look at going with a full dry-sump oiling system.  

Fortunately, the guys at Roger Clark Motorsport were a huge help, and even shared some data with us to show the differences between the two.  It turns out that they ran into the same sort of issues when they were developing their Gobstopper 1 race car.

When we were talking to Micah from 3MI Racing on the podcast about engine design, the topic of Dry Sump Oiling systems came up.  Since Micah has a wealth of experience designing race engines, we wanted to get his take on what would be best for a Subaru track car or race car.

Every Subaru WRX or STI rolled off the line with a wet sump, and you can certainly take your car to the track without diving too deeply into the oiling system.  But the more power and the more grip that you start to make, the more likely it is that your oiling system will need some upgrades to keep your car reliable.

Back in 2017, Jon sat down with Mike from Peterson Fluid Systems to talk about Oiling Systems.  Peterson Fluid Systems specialize in Dry Sump Oiling Systems and supporting components like Tanks, etc. so they are a welth of knowledge in this area.

For this first part of the conversation, we started out by talking about Engine Oiling Systems in general, and we get to more specific details about Dry Sump Oiling Systems in the following videos.

As we have started to put out a lot more information about our experience running the Roger Clark Motorsport Dry Sump on our race car, we have started to get more questions about how a Dry Sump oiling system compares to an Accusump.  And when an Accusump might be a better option.

So we decided to made a video to take a look at both options.

For part two of our conversation with Mike from Peterson Fluid Systems, we talk all about Dry Sump Oiling Systems.

We talk about a few good options to modify and improve your oiling system in part one of our video and when you will would want to consider going with a Dry Sump Oiling System.

For the 2020 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, we made a number of changes to our PPIHC WRX race car, one of the biggest of which was to switch to the Roger Clark Motorsport 4-Stage Dry Sump Oil Pump.

Last year being what it was, making this switch took longer than we expected, and we were somewhat slowed down by an engine failure (not oil related) in early testing on Pikes Peak, so we didn't have much time to document our results.

Now as we are starting to work on the car to get ready for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, we wanted to start off by looking back at our initial results with the new Dry Sump Oil System, before we take a look at some of the changes that we are making to the car for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

Last year being what it was, making this switch took longer than we expected, and we were somewhat slowed down by an engine failure (not oil related) in early testing on Pikes Peak, so we didn't have much time to document our results.

Now as we are starting to work on the car to get ready for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, we wanted to start off by looking back at our initial results with the new Dry Sump Oil System, before we take a look at some of the changes that we are making to the car for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

For part 2 of our Dry Sump video, we are going to go into detail about both why and how we changed the plumbing set up for our Roger Clark Dry Sump system in the hopes of getting it to work better, and give us more run time on the car before we had to take a look at the oil level in the tank and in the catch tank.

We have to thank everyone at Roger Clark Motorsport for all of their help, as they have been invaluable to us as we are getting this system to work properly.

One of the keys to keeping your engine reliable is oil pressure.  When we had Jeremy from Money Shift Rally on the Podcast a few weeks ago to talk about all the data he had collected from his Rally car, this was one of the first things that we wanted to talk about.

This isn't about Dry Sump Oiling specifically, but it does give you a good idea of how pressure can fluctuate related to oil temperature, and this can be one of the reasons that a Dry Sump Oiling System will give you more consistant oil pressure not only under high cornering loads, but also as oil temperature gets hotter.

So how does oil temperature effect oil pressure?

For the 3rd part of our 2017 conversation with Mike Morten from Peterson Fluid Systems, we talked about many of the frequently asked questions that Peterson gets about oiling systems.  In the process of answering those questions, we also get into some oil system theory as well.

If you are looking to improve your oiling system, or better understand an issue that you may have found, hopefully this video will be helpful to you.

If you have been following along with our 2024 run up Pikes Peak, you know that we had an engine failure during qualifying.  You might also have heard us mention that we most likely hurt the new engine in our Pikes Peak WRX STI on race day.

Now that we have a Haltech Nexus R5 standalone ECU installed in our race car, we finally have the ability to go through the data to see what happened to our car.

In this episode of the podcast, we sit down with Harvey Epstein of The Boostcreep to go through all the data, and diagnose what happened to both engines running on Pikes Peak.

We have to give Harvey a big Thank You for all his help with tuning the car, and supporting us through race week, as well as helping us to go through all of the data!

From Smeedia:

We are building another Engine for the 2.5RS, The last one I sent out to a customer so we need another for our car. But if we are building another, why not build it better than the last one right? This time around we are opting to use a set of JE Ultra Pistons and Manley I beams compared to what we would typically use. The cases are a set of seasoned EJ25 Cases that have been close-decked by the guys down at Outfront Motorsports. But the cherry on top is the Roger Clark Motorsports Dry Sump that we are fitting to this EJ25.