Oil pressure/Oil cooler/Bearing health
We spun the #1 bearing testing a couple weeks ago. We just about have everything back together, but we are worried about what caused this in the first place. We have a pretty big aftermarket oil cooler on the car and the oil pressure is over 100 until the engine heats up (at which point it then drops into the 70-80 range). The oil pressure sensor is positioned just before the oil is pumped through the cooler. We were chatting about this and started to wonder if the oil cooler could be restricting the flow of oil in some way, maybe even enough to fail to lubricate things on the other end of the block.
Is this a legit concern? Does this even make any sense? :shrug:
TIA.
Oil Pressure / Bearing Health
I have been running VW's for years, and never had any bearing issues, unless there was an oil pump problem or starvation. Are you using a baffled pan, like the ones from Techtonics?, What kind of clearances are you running on the rods? and Mains?.... I have found out that the oil pumps do wear out and if the pan is not baffled, starvation is possible. I do run an external oil cooler, and have never had a issue on my Mk 1 and MkIII models, The Mk II always had high oil temps. But on my MK III, using Mobil 1, 5/30, at 220 deg, oil pressure still is abut 75 lbs at 6200. Higher on short courses with lower speeds. I would look for either at not enough bearing clearance, starvation, or pump failure.... My opinion....
David Ellis-Brown