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The entire "cage" bolts into the rear seat area - and also holds the dry sump settling tank, which I will talk about below.
DRY SUMP TANK MOUNTING
Running a dry sump oiling system is a really REALLY good idea on a car like this that has massive race tires (13.8" wide), lots of downforce, and a built race engine. And any dry sump oiling system needs an oil settling tank / reservoir.
There are two schools of thought on oil tank placement with a dry oiling system: the engine builder wants it up front RIGHT next to the engine, with minimal plumbing runs. Mounting it under the hood at the firewall is common. The chassis engineer wants this 10-14 quart oil tank at the
opposite end of the chassis than the motor, to keep improve rearward weight bias. This "trunk mounting" option is somewhat less common, but it is done.
On this car we split the difference, mounting the oil tank opposite of the fuel cell, sitting behind the driver. It also pokes down through the rear seat floor, to keep the weight as low in the chassis as possible.
The shape of a
dry sump tank is also important. The taller the tank the more distance the settling oil has to travel and hopefully the more baffles it can pass through to remove entrapped air. The oil that hits spinning engine parts can get whipped up like a milk shake and turn into foam. Foam doesn't "pump" well and lubricates even worse. The longer the oil has to travel inside the settling tank, the more air gets removed and the more "liquid" it becomes. So a tall/skinny tank is more advantageous than a short/fat tank. But all sorts of sizes are available to help builders package the oil tank in their application.
The tank that fed the 7.0L LS7 engine in the the factory equipped dry sump C6 Z06 was tall and skinny. One major change happened from 2007 through 2013 model run of this car was - to make the tank larger in volume, going from 6 quarts up to 9 quarts (bringing total oil capacity of engine + tank + cooler from 8 to 11 quarts). There are even larger capacity oil tank units for this OEM LS7 application from the aftermarket.
We chose an ARE tank (p/n 7025A) which has a 25.5" height and 6" diameter. This holds 2.5 gallons of oil (10 quarts) and is the "Tall and Skinny" option. These are more of a chore to package inside of a race car. We also ordered the ARE tank mount (p/n 7000) to hold the tank, which was mounted to the 1" tubular structure mounted in the back seat.
As you can see it sits pretty high in the chassis but its 25.5" tall. It sticks down under the rear seat floor (through a hole) as far down as we could comfortably put it, too.
This hole of course has to be covered, but a fire proof aluminum enclosure will handle that.
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