Hey guys, been a while since i've posted anything on this forum .

Anyhow, heres my story:

Started hearing a rapping noise and it sounded almost like the Rod bearings or Main bearings were going bad. So I decided to check the oil pressure at idle and warmed up to normal temp. I hooked into the oil pressure switch location and it was reading 0Psi. So I thought to myself, "Thats not good at all..." Anyways, I started tearing into it and found out that the noise I was hearing was coming from the waterpump, and I replaced it with a new one. While replacing that, I decided to change the oil pump and pickup as well since I wasnt getting good pressure ( I pulled the oil pump from a known good working motor i had sitting around ). Hoping for the best. Well when I had my oil pan off, I noticed I had a small amount of shavings in the bottom of the pan. Not good. I ended up replacing the rod bearings and main bearings while i had everything apart (without checking clearance between the bearings and plastigauge). I noticed that the 3rd main bearing (wider one) was where all my shavings were coming from. Cleaned the crank up checked for scratches and everything looked good.

I put everything back together, pulled all the ignition cables out and cranked the motor over to circulate the oil a little bit. Started it up with everything hooked up as far as timing goes and it started up right away and seemed to run great. I was thinking, "Bonus.. it sounds good!". I thought, I might as well check the oil pressure now and checked it when the motor was still cold. Started up and was at 25Psi but once it started heating up it dropped to 0psi. Now I was getting a little aggravated, so I decided to change the oil filter Relief Valve with a known good valve too thinking that maybe the valve was screwing with the pressure somehow. No luck.

Do you guys have any ideas of what the problem could be ? Thanks in advance. Sorry for the long story but I figured it would be better if you knew the whole story of whats been done already.

Also, the car has 212,558 miles on the motor and it is a 5sfe out of a 1992 toyota camry LE.

Brandon

 

Any signs of engine sludge?

Did you check the oil pump pressure relief valve system?

Assuming you discovered the bad water pump before digging into the oil pressure issue, were there any other reasons to draw you to check the oil pressure?

 

Yeah , i pulled the Clip out of the pump and it fell down under its own pressure so I am assuming that it was in good shape. The reason I checked the oil pressure was because the noise it was making before I started tearing into it was almost just like a Rod or Main bearing making a slapping tapping kind of noise, but it ended up being just the water pump was so wore out it was eating the casing for the pump housing. The motor seems to be pretty clean for 212,000 miles on it. No noticable sludge deposits on the top of the motor either. Cams seemed to look good, PCV Valve was clean, no build up on oil cap.. Bottom of motor seemed in pretty good shape too, no build up on the caps or in the pan besides where the JB-Weld was, but like I said in the first post I changed out the oil pan for a different oil pan without JB Weld. I am thinking that I should have used the plastigauge between the bearings and crank, and now I am hitting myself in the head for not checking that.

I did do this for a test though, I started my other camry's up and tested the pressure cold vs hot and I had a huge difference. Both of the other camry's on a cold start with the oil pressure gauge hooked up read 75psi, and then dropped to 50psi when warm. Referring to the Repair Manual it seems that the oil pressure is supposed to be between 36psi and 70psi when running at idle at normal operating temperature.

The other camry on the other hand read a meesly 25psi on a cold start and then at idle it read between 0 and 5psi.

I also pulled the Oil pressure switch out on all three camry's and started them up without anything connected and watched to oil flow. Both of the camry's running good shot a steady stream about 4 feet in front of the car and the other camry did more of a spray type stream and made it no farther than the front bumper. Not a scientific test, but It tells me that I am having a major oil pressure issue in the camry that has a lot of new parts on it. The other camrys have 87,000 miles on one motor and 161,000 on the other motor.


Addition: ( Just thought of this )

Also, I have another question. What is the difference between oil pumps with cam sensors and without?? Did the Japanese models only come with one or the other? The oil pump I installed on the motor I changed the bearings is a Japanese model, so I am wondering if maybe since I put a USDM oil pump on it maybe the Driven and Drive rotors are different sizes?

 

Not sure if the oil pump would change between engines.

The service manual has gear to case clearances you can check.

Assume you checked the oil pump intake screen.

How about the oil pressure spring length, this would control oil bypass.

Otherwise too large of bearing clearance.

I suggest you ask at the Toyotanation website, more members.