Good news and bad news. No wait, just bad. Now some good
 

Good news is, vlad's motor is in dopples car, and runs.


Bad news, we discovered rice while bleeding the clutch.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1401136903
It's certainly not for brake clearance...
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1401136903
And it's spread to the back wheels too...
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1401136903

"Minimizing lug thread engagement" mod?

I better see some 1000psi ALLOFIT vids of that motor soon.

He's got a bunch of break in to do not to mention getting a proper tune.

holy cow, are those 949 racing lug nuts? makes mine look perfect lol.

I have bigger problems right now.

Drove the car home, fixed the exhaust rattle, drained/filled oil and replaced the filter...now I have no oil pressure, but the filter is full....FML.

I feel as though this thread needs to go to the engine section for trouble shooting at this point, I can only imagine how gut wrenching this must be for Mike.

Simple stuff first, wire fallen off the sender?

What oil pressure sender do you have? A "real" or a "dummy" gauge? I know oem your car would have the dummy, but it's a nice upgrade to have the real sensor.

Also, i'm assuming the car was running when you saw there was no oil pressure? What did the engine sound like, excessively noisy? If there was really no pressure you would probably be able to hear it.

The oil filter is right next to the oil pressure sensor IIRC...

Lars had similar problem on exactly the same kind of engine:
https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...-49760/page24/

dunno if same or not, but worth reading about it.

also its really weird to me how it was fine then suddenly lost all oil pressure after the oil change. that's just really really not likely. if an oil pump or gears go, I'd think it would be during driving or boost or something. not working 1 second, turn off, and suddenly no pressure. that's just............weird

Something is clogged. Or stuck open.

Maybe knocked off the sender wire while taking off the filter?

:party: Let's hope this.

Nope. He said he started it and it was super loud after the oil change, and it was barely squeezing oil out of the filter hole when he yanked it again. that = no oil pressure.

It might be stuck relief valve on the oil pump. Or something coulda got in there and clogged it. Or maybe the oem oil pump actually did take a dump, but I highly doubt that. A pump doesn't blow up with the engine off lol

My sender was bad along with a break in the wire continuity. Check it all before you jump to oil pump conclusions.

He also has an oil filter relocation kit, so he wasn't down by that gauge wire. Hopefully he can rule that out with a separate gauge soon.

Its starting to sound more and more like the problem Lars had.

His was also a clog related to a sandwitch plate IIRC

If you'd like I can ship you my spare sender if you can't find the source. Just let me know.

He's in California with sun and shit.

I'm in oregon with Dopple and his car.

lol

Ah...to early for intuitive deduction. I forgot you guys had the car now Curly. I'm sure ya'll have extras, but just in case I can send the working gauge and/or sender

This is why you should only buy parts/motors from reputable people :party:


I keed I keed.

Yeah. I'm slightly bummed. All signs point toward a stuck relief valve.

Car idled for about 10 seconds after the oil change before I noticed no pressure.
I immediately turned it off and checked the sensor.
Removed the INJ relay to see if the gauge would register anything without the engine running. No dice.
Pulled the new oil filter and it was full.
Cranked over again. No pressure.
Put a new filter on, cranked it for 6-8 seconds, pulled the filter and it was empty.
Put the INJ relay back in and fired it up for like 2 seconds and the engine was notably noisy.
Turned it off.
Check oil filter- dry.
Looked in the oil cap- nearly dry.

Now I'm going to need to have the car towed/trailered anywhere to work on it.

A mechanic can't help you, you need a voodoo witch doctor to remove the curse from that longblock.

To be fair, you have a bigger garage than I do, with less stuff in it. You just have a perfectly running Porsche in it taking up space. Get it to Jenn's garage and you can be out working on it at all hours of the night if you so wish.

I'm hoping for another clogged sandwich plate thingy.

I've got a shit load of Mormons in this state that say they can perform miracles...he can take them off our hands. Of course, we are all hoping he'll keep and/or dispose of them once used.

Also mike, Ed and I performed a front subframe swap on his MSM in 4 hours, start to finish, which included swapping out some damaged a-arms. You might consider that, as opposed to pulling the engine.

I'll always say that putting an oil pan on upside down sounds like a pain in the ass, but it's something to think about.

After the cars in the air with the front suspension out, it's 4 nuts and bolts on each side and the steering rack away from dropping out.

First before anything else, take off the alternator, there will be a small Allen head plug on the oil pump. Remove that and put lots of paper towels down all around and briefly try to crank the car. If you do not get oil coming out that hole then the oil pump is not building pressure. If oil shoots out then you know the oil pump is working.

Once you verify if the pump is working or not you can move down to tracing where the oil goes next. After the pump it should be going to the sandwich plate plate for the stock oil filter. On my engine it was the stupid cheap glowshift sandwich plate that was blocking flow. Once I removed that oil pressure was good.

Also what did you guys have to do to get the engine to start? Or did it just happen to work fine after dropping it in?

Aren't you the oil circulation expert ;)

Dropped it in and it fired up perfectly. We used a different cam sensor and vvt actuator, which were swapped out with Mike's sparkly valve cover. Could of been anything with Vlad's car, as we obviously have a different fuel system, injectors, harness, and ecu. He has the same vvt cam gear that vlad shipped with the motor though.

The port that shieund is talking about: I've used it to prime the oil pump when the oil pump did not self prime. Once the oil pump is primed, it tends to pull oil much more bettererer. I found that i didn't need to pull the alternator to get to the allen bolt, but i did need to do a bit of fancy dancing with ratchet extensions and "transmission fill" style tubes. A stuck relief valve would be a good reason for the engine to not self-prime.

You may be able to prime the oil pump and get it to pull its oil that way, which would be good enough for getting it to a garage somewhere without a tow bill.

Someone send me an old oil pump. I'm modifying that relief valve bitch to be removable from that port. Shouldn't be too hard.

You can probably get to the port without removing the alternator, I say to remove it more just to keep it from getting coated in oil.

Are you serious about this? I may have a spare oil pump that I could send out to you to play with. I will take a look for it next time I am over where I have a ton of my spare parts still.

No, I just looked at the engine I have in my garage. I was thinking the relief valve was behind the allen port, but it's not, its pointing straight down by the pick up, blonde moment.

I am thinking that if you were truly motivated, you could drill a hole in the oil pan, weld in an NPT port for a plug, and remove it when you want to mess with the valve.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to remove a cotter pin through even a 1" hole, and around the pickup tube. All that pin is there for is to hold the spring in place, so it would probably be replaced with a safety clip.

Yeah, I want to try either the 'vacuum on the turbo oil feed' method, or the 'force oil through the port on the pump' method. School kills my schedule mon-thurs and I really want to get hacking on this. I'll probably remove the alternator for ease of access.

What I don't get is that the engine was drained of oil from its initial build (Vlad) when we put it in. Then it was filled and made pressure just fine. It was the 2nd drain/fill that the OP lost its prime.

I'm doubtful that the sandwich plate (FM) is any cause- it was on the car before for years without any problems.

I would do the oil pump priming hole before you hook the vacuum up to the oil feed.

My sandwich plate worked fine for 4 or 5 months before it got clogged and stopped the oil flow. It was working fine on Sunday, then later that week when I went to drive the car to work it was clogged. As far as I could tell there was no rhyme or reason to the cause.

What was it clogged with? Pics? I read your thread, but saw no conclusion to the sandwich plate issue.

Honestly never found out. Gave it to my machine shop to look at and then never followed up. When I am back at the shop sometime within the next week I will check and see if they still have it laying around anywhere.

You could also try some compressed air to help force anything through a choke point. Obviously use a reasonable amount of pressure.

I used the vacuum method, a brake bleeding pump, and shot a little compressed air through the turbo oil feed and the pressure sender 1/8NPT while it was off. Seemed to start up a lot more solidly after I went all out.

This was when I was going through my "do I have oil pressure or a shitty gauge" saga.

So if the relief valve is stuck, what's the fix? Removing it and cleaning/smoothing the plunger and hole? Replace pump with a new one?

I'd get a BE billet pump if you're gonna replace it.

But I still think its clogged, cause I specifically took a LONG time cleaning and polishing that part when I took apart the stocker. I read all the horror stories about stuck valve

They're $127 from rosenthal, I'd probably just replace it with new. Half the time the gouge left by whatever jammed it in the first place will probably jam it again. Sell it for $50 shipped as "fixable", and trust the new pump.

Eliminate the much easier stuff first.

are the vvt ones 130 too? cause that's way lower than what I saw

I'd love to hope it isn't a stuck valve. But I'm preparing for the worst. I'm going to attempt to pull the sandwich plate off and turn the engine over to see how much oil comes out.


Stock from Rosenthal- $294
PUMP,OIL (BP6D-14-100) - $294.82 - BP6D14100

BE- $439
https://boundaryengineering.squaresp...reetstrip-pump

949 has one now too. I don't know if they are in stock, though, or if it is just a re-branded BE.

Looks to be a BE pump to me.

Oh yeah, vvt, that's the $300 option unfortunately.

Good luck with the sandwich plate test Mike.

Another question- how much worrying should I be doing about cranking the engine over (not running it) with this appearent lack of oil pressure?

I was told it isn't a really isn't an issue as long as you aren't cranking it forever and several times in a row.

300-400rpm for short periods of time shouldn't hurt it
(obviously disable fuel so as not to flood it)

Depending on the purpose of said cranking, the removal of the spark plugs (and attendant disconnection of the low-voltage side of the coils, and of the injectors) will afford much easier cranking, with less mechanical load on the bearings, less electrical load on the starter and battery, and higher cranking RPMs leading to more prompt initiation of oil circulation.

Doesn't help your cams though. Probably wouldn't hurt to pop the valve cover and put a generous coating of assembly lube on the cam lobes if you're going to do a lot of this.

There really is no point in cranking it for a long time. 3-5 second bursts should already get the needle jumping up if pump is building pressure. And there's really no need to do this more than a few times - troubleshoot using the couple methods posted already, and if its no bueno might be time to yank the pump

On my stock engine, after sitting for weeks during the turbo install, cranking would not build oil pressure (with plugs intact), but it also cranks only about 250 RPM. I had to let it fire off, then had pressure in seconds.

More bad news-

Finally got to tinkering with the car.

First thing I did was pull the coils and plugs, pull the INJ relay, and disconnected the oil feed to the turbo and put it in a bottle. Cranked engine over for 6-8 seconds. No oil in bottle.

Next I pulled the oil inlet hose to the remote oil filter with the logic that it is the first place oil goes after the pump. I then took a bottle that had pump about 2oz of gear oil, filled it with regular oil (and mixed the oil up well) and "pumped" oil through the inlet hose in hope that it would prime the oil pump. I pumped about 8oz of oil into the line. After this was done, I turned the engine over again for another 6-8 seconds. This time I saw the gauge spring up to life. YAY! I kept cranking for 3-4 more seconds to ensure oil flow through the system. Stopped cranking. Checked the bottle for the oil feed and there was a few oz of oil in it. I quickly re-installed the plugs, coils, oil feed and put the INJ relay in. Fired up the car and failed to see oil pressure. FML.

I then pulled the coils/plugs/oil feed/INJ relay and started all over. Also, I pulled the filter off and drained it. I did this 2 more times (priming through the oil inlet hose and turning the engine over). No dice. I did get a small amount of oil from the turbo oil feed...combined from about 20 seconds of turning the engine over was about 2 table spoons. The oil filter was getting oil to it as well.

Finally, I went to drain the oil filter one last time and noticed it was a bit shiny/had small flecks in it. That's all I needed to see to go into a full-on panic attack because now I feel like the engine is done. I can't take this anymore....


This was basically the setup I was using to pump oil into the oil pump via the feed line to the oil filter...

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1401740392

Did you remove that hex screw on the oil pump and see if oil came out like lars posted?

I didn't get to doing that. I did forget one detail- when I was 'dry' cranking it, the oil filter would fill up with oil. There seems to be some flow, but I don't know how much. The car is in a parking lot and the sun is beating down on it right now, so crawling around on the pavement to get under the car to remove the alternator is not what I want to be doing right now. Will add info about oil filter filling with oil to previous post.

Damn man.. now I haz a sad.

Shot of the suspended particulates in the oil filter (click full-size to see better)-

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1401744844

motor has like 20 miles on it, that could just be from the freshly honed walls/rings.
just sayin

I'd hope so, but given everything going on...I can't help but go straight to worse-case scenario. Unfortunately, this oil has not been driven on. This is the oil I put in it and have cranked up the engine on for maybe all of 30 seconds, and spun over a fair bit trying to build pressure. The engine has already been through the oil you put in it, oil I put in it to drive it home and now this round of oil. I'd think that metal flakes should long be gone.

Not to look at MT for mental therapy, but there is other shit going on in my life that is not just the car situation, and it's all piling up and sucking dry my motivation to give a shit about anything. I just need something to go 'good' soon...and it seems getting to drive my car home last Monday was going to be that thing...until this shit happened.