Thanks Don. So where does the engine oil go when it sumps?
Rob
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Harley engines are intended to be a "dry sump" system. That's an engine where the crankshaft isn't rotating through a pool of oil in the bottom of an oil pan as most car engines do. The oil is circulated continuously and continuously lubricating the rotating and other moving assemblies but the oil capacity not actively doing that at any given time remains in the remote oil pan (where we drain the oil from).
The benefit to this is that there no parasitic power loss from the crankshaft having to swim through the liquid wall of oil with every rotation. The "sumping" problem so many are dealing with (and we're always hoping doesn't happen) is when something occurs and an amount of oil does in fact pool in the bottom of the engine that is large enough in quantity/mass that it becomes that parasitic drag on the engine that it was never designed for. Power goes down, heat goes up, when bad enough parts fail and engines die.