Reinforced oil pickup necessary?

[bnewport]

Do the cars need this or is it only for cars with the balance shafts removed etc? I'm hearing that it should only break if the oil pan is fitted incorrectly or those shafts are removed.

[Big Dog]

This is my view of things like this. When one has a part off the car, if there is anything that may help make the car safer or more durable, DO IT as insurance.

 

Sometimes the oil pickup can crack and that is very bad. The effort to reinforce the pickup is minimal and since there is a possiblity that it might crack, why not do it when the bottom of the engine is open.

 

Big Dog

[Weston]

It's not a bad idea if the oil pan is already off, assuming that you can do it without making the metal more brittle, but I don't know if there's a common or accepted method for doing this reinforcement.

 

Every time that I've seen a cracked pickup tube, and I've seen far too many, it came off of a car that had a balance shaft timing problem... Either one of the shafts (usually the lower one) wasn't timed correctly to the pointer, or one of the sprockets was on backwards (which causes the timing to be way off). If you ever pull the balance shaft sprockets off, you'll see that it has two slots for the woodruff key. The upper and lower sprockets are the same parts, but they absolutely must be installed in different configurations. Be sure to read the manual for the correct configuration if you ever have to reinstall these.

[944-Spec#94]

I agree with Weston. I had a tube fail and engine blow up. Root cause was balance shaft problems just like weston mentioned. Still insurance is insurance.