Are high volume oil pumps OK to run on the street?
We get asked this one from time to time, and the answer is, it depends on the engine. First off; why do you think you need to run a high volume oil pump? The reason performance and race engines use them is because the clearances are upwards of twice the amount as a stock engine. Those voids flow oil out much quicker so they need more volume to stay filled with oil.
A typical stock engine has about .001" - .0015" of rod and main bearing clearances. When you get into more serious engines you will find rod clearances as much as .002" or more, and crank clearances upwards of .0025" - .003" or more. This is also why in the older days, race and performance engines used to run much thicker oils to help "take-up" all of that space. It was common to see straight 40wt and 50wt race oils in engines back in the day. Now days, with much better oils, we tend to run tighter clearances and much thinner oils. We've learned that thinner oil gets to where it needs to go much quicker and with less effort than thicker oils. Larger clearances on serious performance and race engines drain-out quicker so you need a pump that'll push more oil volume into them to keep those larger clearances full. Stock or mild performance engines don't really require that much oil flow because the clearances are much less and therefore "flow" oil much less.
You can't pump oil where it doesn't want to go. In other words, unless your crank and rod clearances are a lot more than a stock engine, then oil simply isn't going to flow and all you are going to do is make a lot of oil "pressure" but not much additional "flow". There's a HUGE difference between "pressure" and "flow". Contrary to what most guys believe, pressure is actually the negative result of flow. If you had full flow, you would have very little oil pressure. What happens when you eat a rod or main bearing? Your .001" - .003" clearance got chewed-up and is now .020" - .030", or basically ten times more than it is supposed to have, so now you have a huge amount of clearance that oil is just POURING out of. It's like slicing into an artery in your body, blood openly flowing out drops your blood pressure.
Other than the noise of a knocking rod or a squeaking "spun" main bearing, how can you tell when you have a bad bearing problem? The pressure reading on your oil pressure gauge drops WAY down. This is because you've opened-up that clearance way too far and now oil is just pouring out that huge space, which causes the pressure to drop way down. So, you increased the flow, and as a result, decreased the pressure.
Pressure can basically be looked at as "effort". How much effort is the pump going through to push that oil. The thicker the oil, the more the effort, and... the tighter the clearances, the more the effort to push oil into those tight spaces. Just because there is effort there (higher oil pressure) doesn't mean more oil is actually flowing. This again is especially true with thicker oils and why thicker oils create more oil pressure. Let me put this is terms even a kid can understand. Go to the local fast food joint and buy 2 drinks. One soft drink and one milk shake. Take a sip through the straw of the soft drink, now take a sip from the milk shake. It's a hell of a lot harder to sip that thick milk shake up through that straw than it is to sip-up that watery soft drink, right? Oil pumps and oil thicknesses are no different. You increased your effort to sip that milk shake and yet got much less of it into your mouth than you did the soft drink. That's exactly the same thing with oil pressure and oil flow vs. clearances and oil thicknesses, vs. oil volumes and pressures. if you want more milkshake with less effort, get a bigger diameter straw, which is like opening-up clearances on your engine, OR wait until the milkshake gets a bit warmer and thins down a bit. This is exactly like oil pressure dropping when your engine warms-up. It's because the cold, thick oil is requiring more effort (pressure) to push it into those clearances, but when it warms-up and gets thinner, it requires even less pressure, yet your FLOW increased. People seem to think this is such a complicated subject, but it really isn't at all.
Another thing is that higher volume oil pumps put much higher loads on the gears that are driving them, meaning the distributor and cam gears. Chevy engines can handle the higher loads of high volume oil pumps just fine, where most Ford's have troubles. Why? Chevy's use a much larger gear than a Ford does, in fact, it's about twice the size, which means it's about twice as strong. The distributor gear is what takes the load of spinning the oil pump. The more volume you pump through an engine, the more load gets put on that gear.
Ford gears tend to get eaten-up because they just aren't big or strong enough to take the load that a high volume pump puts on it. Once you eat-up a distributor gear it is pretty much disaster for the cam gear as well. If you wipe either one out, count on having to replace the cam shaft! This doesn't even get into all of that metal going through the engine, which doesn't help things like bearings and such.
