{} My first post on this fourm looking for help so please don’t say there’s been 1 million other threads about this, I’ve read them and they didn’t help my situation. I’ve recently decided to DET swap my s14 with a redtop. Swap went smoothly, the car ran and drove well Afr reading of 14:1 at startup then 16.4:1 when warm and about 10-13 while boosting. However my oil pressure gauge always read 0 (first red flag) I shrugged it off and blamed the pro-sport gauge and asked the company for a replacement because when I put the wrong oil filter on and started the car the filter popped off and pissed oil everywhere so I deffs had oil pressure (my DE took m20 thread filter so I assumed the redtop would too but I was wrong, 3/4 was actually what it took). I had problems with fitting the oil sensor and the oil filter because they are wide and the holes they screw in are right next to eachother so I got a sandwich plate to fix that. Yesterday I started the car up to show a mate and low and behold I heard a tick when I rev it up to about 2000-2500rpm. I have driven the car before this and quite hard to be honest for about 30-40mins and I never heard the tick/rattle. I pulled the oil feed line off to the turbo and the CAS off and turned the car over, nothing out of the oil feed, pulled the oil filter off and turned the car over again nothin at all, infact the oil filter was pretty much empty. I drained all the oil and it was black but not sparkly or gritty at all. I also took off the rocker cover and checked the cams for scoring and nothing. Idk what to do, I’ve just spent 5 grand in total if not more on the engine and all the extra parts and wiring. I know the oil pump seems like it is gonna need to be replaced so I’m gonna have to pull the engine back out (FUCKKK) but I’m hoping the tick/rattle is just the chain having no tension due to no pressure. It’s just dodgy that the sensor always read 0 and I’ve been driving it, if it really had 0 oil pressure all this time surely it would’ve shit itself by now. Why tf would the pump fail now? I have brand new 10-50 Penrite full synthetic oil in the engine. The person I got the engine off of had it sitting for 1&1/2 years and they pulled it out because they stacked the car. Where do I go from here or why may this have happened. Ps sorry about the long description just gives you my point of view. https://youtube.com/shorts/ja4wVsxdBQ0?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/ATjbBAFgLx8?feature=share
EDIT (FOUND AND FIXED!) So, I have no clue how but turns out my car has had 0 oil pressure all this time, how do I know this? Because I have fixed the oil pressure problem and the gauge is now giving readings. However the one terminal on the oil pressure sender was seemingly touching my starter motor so it may have been grounding out and giving me a 0 pressure reading but I’m unsure. I deffs had near 0 oil pressure though. I pulled out my engine and took my bearings out and they were mint as, looked at my cams and they were mint too, no scoring. Took out my oil pump and it looked brand new. I was stumped so I did some surfing on the oil pressure problem amoung red tops and found that a really common problem with them is the sump having a dent and the pickup being a shitty design, to my avail my sump pan had a minor as dent in it but apparently the pickup sits like 2mm above the pan. So I pushed the dent out and swapped my pickup for the s14 one and lobbed it all together and sealed it up. As I was wiping out and around the sump pan to put some gasket seal on I found a huge oval scratch at the bottom of it the same shape as the s13 pickup *facepalm*. It was indeed the problem the whole time. I now have perfect oil pressure. I’m surprised my engine didn’t blow up because I ran it quite a few times with 0 oil pressure. I guess I’m just lucky. Hope this kinda helps anyone else in years to come with the same problem. Oh and the ticking noise in the videos posted was the chain smacking the timing chain guide because the chain tensioner runs on oil pressure and since I had none it was slack. To evaluate on the s13 pickup being a shitty design lookup s13 and s14 pickup and compare. One is like someone's chopped off the bottom of a cone so if the sump gets dented the pickup sucks to the bottom of the sump like a sucky thing and blocks it completely. Whereas the s14 and I believe s13 blacktop and so on pickup is shaped like a birds beak so it can’t get fully blocked off with a dent in the sump, it would still lower oil pressure but not make it 0. Also the s13 pickup has a shiddy O ring gasket that doesn’t work well and leaks whereas all the other designs have a full plate gasket. Sorry about the long description, I just like details when I read stuff.
