cosbysweater

Hey guys, I have sort of a odd issue here, I have a sbe lq4 with about 190k on it and I'm having some oil pressure problems. I bought a 2006 express 3500 for the engine and trans for my current car, I changed the oil pan to a Holley 302-1 and used the supplied o rings in the kit. I swapped cams in it, just used a ls6 cam I had laying around. Now here's my issue, the car is turbo charged and it has almost no driving oil pressure. This first happened on it I was running uncapped truck injectors and long story short one was bad and douched fuel into the oil and thinned it out badly. Never drove the car really when this issue happened. I swapped the injectors out and changed the oil and went with delo 15w40. Started the car and it had 40 psi cold oil pressure and it would rise appropriately to around 60 when the rpm was increased. I've driven the car about 100 miles now and now I'm back to no oil pressure. Cold idle it sits around 20 psi and under cruise it dropped to below ten. I shut it off and let it cool down and limped it home. Could a oil pump cause this? At 20 psi I can bring the rpm up and it will slowly go up to 30 psi. Things I have checked are as follows

Oil pickup o ring was not rolled, I made sure of that when I swapped the pan.

Cam bearings look good, I inspected the oil filter off the truck as well, no brass in the filter.

Verified oil pressure concern with a mechanical gauge in the factory oil pressure sending unit port.

Also made sure the oil didn't stink like fuel, which it didn't and it's consistency feels right.

I'm just stumped, I'm really hoping it's the oil pump and nothing else, possibly the fact it does have 190k on it and it looked original?

Any help is greatly appreciated

cosbysweater

So I ordered a oil pump for it and I'm going to check the oil pump to pan clearance and make sure nothing is tweeked. I'll update with findings when I do the oil pump swap on Thursday.

cosbysweater

Thought I should update this one. I replaced the oil pump with no change, so I ripped the engine out and found the cam retainer plate o ring to be rock hard and the rear cover gasket to be torn. Found the rear 2 cam bearings to be spun. Luckily the cam was okay so I slapped new cam bearings in and did a new cam retainer plate and rear cover gasket. Reinstalled the engine and found no recurring issues. Oil pressure never drops below 40psi now
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gagliano7

Nice job finding that problem. Sucks you had to pull the motor again but at least now your good to go.