Thread: oil pressure question/ problem

Long story short my old engine died because of a stuck closed thermostat so I bought an engine from a forum member that bought it from another forum member, I heard the engine running before it was pulled from the car that was being parted out, and it ran and sounded fine, couldn't drive it because of cheap ebay clutch broke
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Fast forward to tonight, I go to pick the car up after the engine was put in, and start it up and it sounds like a diesel (narrow down the sound to the timing chain/ cylinder 1 area), drove it around the block and the noise would come and go when it wanted, so we pulled the valve cover off and checked the tensioners and timing chain, and all of the valve springs and shims
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we then put it all back together and guess what the noise was still there we drove it around the block and it would go away and come back randomly, then a check engine light came on (this was 12am so no advance auto open to check light), and oil pressure light started blinking, we drove it back to the house and noticed the oil light/noise was connected to each other, at high rpms light/noise would go off and low rpms it would come back on,
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So I looked in the vicinity of the oil pump and oil is leaking from the front cover somwhere but not from the crankshaft seal, so again we pulled the valve cover off again and started the car no oil squirted out anywhere up top, so our best guess is something is clogged somewhere, and when the engine is at higher rpms the oil squeezes through, or the stock oil pressure sender is bad and tells the pump to not pump as much? (Is that possible? It comes from an ASE certified tec for an audi dealer)
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the engine is sr20de and the only things we changed on the engine was swapped gspec crank pulley and spacer that was off of the other engine, swapped distributor, rear main seal, front main seal and associated gaskets, engine has approx 135,000 miles and ran synthetic oil in it
Also, I just drove the car 50 miles down the highway to get home because I got dropped off to pick the car up, the motor was fine the whole way, I turned the car off at traffic lights and had no problem the whole way, just at low rpms I have no oil pressure (according to stock dummy gauge)
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Any ideas?
we're going to pull the engine out and apart again tomorrow (3rd time), and probably change the front cover and oil pump from blown engine

Dented oil pan blocking the pickup tube.

winner winner chicken dinner cliff

Oil pan is fine, and pickup tube is fine

if your oil pan is fine, I'd start thinking about the pump then. It definitely is having issues holding pressure. If the engine was ever a sludge monster, though, it might need a good cleaning to get it running right, meaning head removal and disassembly. I bring that up simply because it would suck to remove the engine and replace the timing cover and pump just to find it still doesn't work right, and now you have to do it all again and take the head in.

As a side note, I don't think our cars can "tell" the oil pump to pump more or less. I think it just does what it does. The only sensor for oil pressure is that dummy light, and thats a passive sensor, not an active one. So as far as "telling the pump not to pump as much" I've gotta say "no" to that.

Pump is gear driven, so it's speed is ALWAYS relative to the engine speed in RPM. Wingman is correct.

What type of oil are you running? How clean/dirty is the motor with the valvecover off?

I'm wondering if you have no chain oil squirter

Pulled the lower pan off and found some metal shavings that are magnetic, the engine is clean as a whistle,
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very very light golden color under valve cover, I just put castrol syntec 10w-30 with a little lucas<5% oil stabilizer, the previous owner used conventional and only put 10,000 miles on it before I bought it, and the original owner used mobil 1,
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Like I said above when I started the engine up with the vc off very little oil came out of the oil squirters that run above the cams

its the oil pump than turn did you have an oil pressure gauge by chance?

The squirters themselves could very well be clogged, and everything else fine. When you run the motor at idle, they won't flow a ton like you'd expect them to. Most warm idle oil psi I see is around ~20psi on the gauge.

Pull the oil squirter tubes and give them a good cleaning. If you can't run water or solvent thru them easily and have water come out quickly from all of the little ports, there's definitely blockages that need to be fixed.

No aftermarket gauge yet, only dummy light