First person with 7k and a tow vehicle can take my car. I am tired of it.

So today I spent about 5 minutes cranking my car trying to get it to build oil pressure. I had injectors unplugged, coils unplugged, spark plugs out. First I spent about a minute cranking on my small lawn and garden battery. By the time it was dead I still had no oil pressure. I then swapped to my normal Miata battery out of my 92. I undid the allen plug in the oil pump and filled that with 5w20 oil. I think spent another minute cranking with no success with priming the pump. My main miata battery was getting low so I pulled it out and then hooked up my truck battery. I spent another 2-3 minutes cranking the car, I did stop for a bit to let the starter cool down some.

So at the end of the day I still do not have oil pressure and I have no ******* clue why. I talked to Travis@BE and he did not have much to say. I am planning on going to talk to my machinist tomorrow to see what he has to say. At this point I am tired of this ******* thing. Knowing my luck the motor will be coming back out on Thursday.

Truck battery in my trunk.


Mechanical oil pressure gauge that is hooked straight into the block.


Turbo oil feed line unhooked and in a clear container. Not a single drop of oil came out of this line the whole time I was cranking.


Time for me to go have an extremely stiff drink.

 

I'll take the Tial MVS and the rods.


j/k buddy. Sorry about your issues.

 

Stupid question and all, but do you have oil in it? I mean besides the little bit you added to the pump?

I am probably putting my foot in my mouth right now since I havent read through the entire thread, but is it possible the section of the crankshaft that drives the pump is worn/rounded away and is no longer spinning the gears?

Besides lack of oil or that, I can't understand why you would not have pressure with a brand new pump/gears? Very shitty!

 

Lars, shopvac the oil feed line. It should build pressure then.

 

He shouldn't have to do that though. Is your pickup tube plugged, cracked, or missing the gasket?

 

It has 4.5 quarts or so of cheap autozone oil in it. I have checked that multiple times to just make sure.

Do you have a how to or something on how to properly do that. Well really as to how do I hook a shopvac up to the oil feed line. I am assuming that I will need some type of adapter to make the shopvac hose small enough to tape to the oil feed line. Also should I pull from the turbo oil feed, or from the VVT oil feed? I have AN hoses on both and can easily get to both.

Basically a picture of how it all should hook up is what I need. I am having real trouble figuring out how to imagine it.


The pickup tube should be fine, I just bought an 01+ mbsp and oil pan from Steve at panic motorsports and it looked fine. I gave the machine shop the gasket that goes between pickup tube and oil pump. It was not in my box of leftover/old parts so I am assuming it was installed in the right place. I will ask tomorrow.

EDIT:
I found this link here on how to use the shopvac to prime from the oil filter. I am probably going to built one of these contraptions tomorrow and give it a try. Any reason why this would not work as well all the oil feed line?

 

just duct tape the shopvac hose on. It doesnt need to last.

 

Also dont give up. Jew can do it

 

I had a similar issue with my motorcycle. I ended up loosening the oil filter and it helped prime the system. I couldn't prime it before that.

 

Did you overpack your oil pump with grease?

One this I do before installing an engine is build oil pressure by spinning the crank with a drill, without the timing belt, with no valves in a full lift position.

 

I have a BE Race Pump, I talked to Travis and have no reason to believe that they overpacked it with grease.

Today it is going to rain all day, so I will not actually get to try out the shopvac priming. I am planning on building the device today, then tomorrow after work actually go and see if I can build pressure with it.

 

I told him to do this and he said that was ghetto and scoffed at me. I bet he does it now that God has spoken.

 

As suggested, it sounds to me like it's not primed. I made a preluber out of a gas grill propane tank and prelude my engine through the OE boss on the oil pump seen below. You could probably get a prime through that same port (that was the OE turbo feed on a lot of Mazda pumps/engines, but some aftermarket do not have it) by squeezing a qt. oil container to force oil in.

 

I have taken out that plug and filled the pump with oil through that hole already.

 

is the clearance good on the oil pick up so its not starving for oil ?

 

I had the same issue...
-Take the oil pump bolt out (as shown above) and fill it with oil manually. Have someone crank it, oil should squirt out.
-Put the allen keyed nut back in (USE SILICONE SEALANT OR IT WILL LEAK)
-Take off your oil pressure sensor AND any T's you have attached in that area as well, this is where mine was plugged. Either way, take it all off and turn engine over (cross your fingers for oil to squirt out)

The other option is that you have a hole in the pick-up somewhere so its sucking air instead of oil, but lets not think about dropping the subframe right now.

 

Filling that orifice with oil isn't enough. You need to put some pressure behind it to make sure you prelube the pump to a point of prime. You could probably prime without pressure behind the fill oil, but I wouldn't want to do any more "dry" cranking. Pre-lubers are super easy to make. Basically any kind of vessel that you can put 60psi too. Put a gate valve at the top and barb fitting for the fill hose. Put a schrader valve on the bottom. Fill with a quart (or so) of oil. Reinstall gate valve/barb. Turn over, fill with 60psi of compressed air. Hook up to that oil pump fitting and slowly open the gate valve. When I did mine I could hear the oil coming up through the top of the head at the cams in just seconds. Instant oil pressure on the first start. I used 1/8 npt 90 and barb to adapt to the pump. Don't know if they're all threaded or not.

 

So I just got back from the machine shop. We went through everything that they did putting the motor back together. The cleaned out all the oil passages and blew air through to make sure none were clogged before assembly. The oil pickup tube was clear and they did bolt it down to the oil pump. They are thinking air has to be stuck in the system somewhere.

So tonight I am going to build that contraption to hook a shopvac to my oil filter. The local lowes has everything in stock so I will be picking it all up on the way home. If I actually get to try it will depend on the weather. It has been on and off raining all day, and it supposed to continue throughout the night. Hopefully I get 15 minutes of clear skies so I can give sucking out the air a try.


I will look into this if using a shopvac does not work. I semi understand what you are saying, and might be able to hobble something together.

 

I have never done a fresh motor start. Is this issue common?

 

Well if everything is good it should pick up oil pressure after a few seconds of cranking. At least it did last time I started my new motor.