low oil pressure wont go away!

I have posted on this before but i need to get some more opinions as to what is causing my oil pressure to never reach higher than 50psi.

I Have:
-checked the front cover oring
-replaced and shimmed the front spring
-installed a 115psi race reg
-sonic cleaned my oil cooler

I believe there is something still wrong with the cooler even after the clean as when i eliminate the cooler, by removing the bypass valve, i reach full pressure. however when i plug the bypass hole with a bolt i get the low pressure.

Thinking perhaps there was something stuck in the cooler that a sonic clean could not take care of, i bought another cooler (that was quite decrepid) and got it sonic cleaned and the problem was worse when i plugged the hole.

Is it possible that i have 2 bad coolers?
doesent the problem have to be the cooler since i reach full pressure without it?

thanks

When you remove the plug from the oil cooler, it basically bypasses the cooler. Essentially the same thing as routing one hose (front cover to rear housing) to completely bypass the cooler.

Make sure your pressure sender is the correct one for your gauge. Senders have been known to give false readings. I usually do a simple test with compressed air (and a regulator on my shop compressor) to see that it's reading correctly.

Well I was hoping to see some nugget of knowledge that explains this because I have a very similar problem in my low mileage street engine. When cold it seems fine, but when it warms up pressure peaks at 45-50 psi, and is around 20 at idle. (So unless you got the oil warm running without the cooler it is not neccesarily in the cooler. I picked up 5 or 10 psi of oil pressure runing without the cooler, but it started fading when the oil started warming. I shut it down before it got all the way warm, so I don't know what the full temp situation was without the cooler.) Per my Haynes manual it's within spec, but at the bottom end. I've swapped the cooler (for a known good one), changed both the oil check and relief valves and have had a mechanical gauge agree very well with the electric.

My next step is swapping the oil pump....talk about long shots. If not that I guess it's in the bearings or ecentric shaft.

I am without an engine in my IT7 right now, and have been thinking about "borrowing" the street engine for an event. I won't do it with that low oil pressure though.

Are you using a stock gauge? if so get an aftermarket gauge and try that. The stock gauge is not very acurate and might be the problem. I have never seen an oil pump fail but the front cover o-ring could do it.

Have you shimmed the thermowax pellet under the main bolt of the eccentric shaft?

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Have you shimmed the thermowax pellet under the main bolt of the eccentric shaft?
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i have not and am not familiar with this modification. is this a common cause of low pressure? and how tough of a job is it to do.


and yes i am using an aftermarket guage that reads close to stock