Thread: Turbo Oil Weight

I know this has been posted on before, but as our search system won't accept the word "oil", or any other 3 letter word or acronym (there are many), I need to ask...

My SR20DE+T has been running great for a while now. Just did the blow through MAF changes (running better), and changed my oil. I was running 5w30 conventional for break in (nice and easy), and it was quite cold outside, so I didn't really have any issues. Now it's getting warmer, and I've switched to synthetic.

I was having issues with the idle oil pressure dropping, and the oil pressure while driving wasn't great either (starts out great then drops to about 1 PSI for every 100 RPM.. so.. 20 PSI @ 2000 RPM)... Then once the engine is warm enough for the fans to kick on (I have them set at 180), the pressure drops to nearly next to nothing at idle and about half of what it was cold while driving (babying it, of course).

I switched to AMSOIL 10w30, and have noticed a small improvement, I can cruise around longer at the better oil pressure but I'm still dropping pretty close to zero once warm at idle.

What weight (AMSOIL, most likely) should I switch to? 10w40? 10w50? Something else? I've already gone synthetic, so going back isn't an option.

I don't think my oil pump is the issue as it's having no problem when I first start the car and drive it around for a bit. Depending on the temp my oil pressure hovers around 50 or so on startup, and it's not uncommon for me to see oil pressure in the 40's even at low RPMs while the car is still cool.

Need a good idea pretty quickly. I'm doing the other oil change this evening before a cruise.

Thanks, guys.

I run 20w50 vr1 conventional in my car. Great oil pressure even after several hours on the dyno.

Does anyone make a 10 or 20w50 synthetic?

Edit: I checked AMSOIL's website directly and they have a bunch of high weight 10-20w50 oils available. Let's hope I can get some from my AMSOIL guy tonight before my cruise.

valvoline vr1 synthetic comes in 20w50 so does mobil 1.

You shouldn't be getting zero oil pressure from any fresh oil much less AMSOIL, even if it is 10w-30. I used German Castrol 0w-30 and AMSOIL 20w50 on a Winter/Summer rotation when I had my DE-T setup. Always got ~10 psi at idle when hot even right before an oil change.

10-15psi @ idle on DE-T setup

yeah I missed that. I never saw below 12psi at idle on my de-t setup with 10w40 synthetic. I have 20+psi on my vet at idle.

That's funny because I had it at 10-15psi idling when hot and I changed it because I doubted my memory.

Also he said cold idle pressure of ~50.... I got way more from my DE-T both ways I had it set up like 80psi or more when cold. Nice VDO gauges too.

OP; How many miles on that motor?

the sending unit could be obstructed or going bad. It could also just have a poor connector. Op you got dents in your oil pan? You said break in so I assume the motor was rebuilt. Did you replace the oil pump housing o-ring?

For sure I forgot to mention that. What kind of gauge is it? I looked at your build thread but didn't see it.

No dents in the oil pan. I cleaned out the pickup tube last time I changed my oil. Had shit lodged in there, but it should be clean. 20w50 helped a lot, but it's not perfect. It's a prosport electric gauge.

I noticed something strange today too. Once warm, the gauge wasn't showing anything more than 40 psi. It only happened once, but I'm thinking the sending unit might be faulty.