A buddy of mine drove down to Houston for Spring Break an to have a cam installed on his 2001 Z06. He ended up doing a MS3 cam, PRC springs, pushrods, oil pump and UD pulley. We had a local guy do the install, reputable guy who had good feedback. Anyhow when we get there and I loaded the startup tune and fired it up, ran good for no tuning, idled at 50psi cold and dropped to around 40psi with oil temps over 190. Seemed to be good so we took off and headed home.

Half way home he called me to let me know the oil pressure was now at 23psi at idle and there was a ticking sound coming from the motor. So we call the guy to bring the car back, he explains how he wanted to check the oil (oil was fresh and reused during cam install).He said it was thin and wanted to try a 40 weight, anyhow after changing the oil it appeared to help, the idle was now around 30 and cruising was in the low 40's. Well today while tuning the ve table I drove the car for the 1st time and noticed the oil pressure was fluctuating different than my car, it was VERY slow to react to rpms and would not want to go past 41psi no matter how much rpm, it would just sit at 41psi all the way from 1800-3500rpm.

We decided to head back and call the guy and on the way home we noticed the car ticking again. It is a light flutter that would increase and decrease with the rpms. Well pulling it back into the neiborhood it decided to stall out and now will not start back up. It will crank and just flutter between 100-300rpm with low oil pressure (5-6psi) and the low pressure and low oil light are now on. We pushed it back to my house and are pondering on what to do.

Does anybody have any ideas what could be going wrong here? He installed a melling 10295, the installer said it came with two o-rings and he used the one that was closest to the stock o-ring. Could that be the issue. He mentioned it might be the lifters and I am willing to bet the ticking noise is the lifters but is it being caused by bad oiling of the top end due to the oring? He is in a major bind being out of town and this is turning into a nightmare. I just want to help him get his car back on the road without having to spend a fortune and without damaging his motor.

 

ooo sorry to hear the misfortune. sounds like maybe the o-ring may have gotten pinched or maybe even cut and she just finally let loose. If the motor was starved for oil (which in this case might be) ticking could be a NUMBER of things but pull codes and post em here. Second get a stehoscope and listen to try and pin point the ticking. If you cant seem to pin point it, its not difficult to pull the valve covers and have a peek. My knowledge is limited in this matter but id start there. Best of luck

 

Yep pickup tube O-ring on the pump is either pinched or cut. Mine did this and after getting everything together i had to take most of it apart again to fix it I went and bought 3 new rings($5 each) just to make sure i had more if i f*cked them up. Didn't need the other 2 but live and learn. Hopefully he didn't cause any valvetrain damage. If he's still getting pressure i'm guessing it's gonna be alright but still there's a chance. His best chance now is to tear back into it and fix the O-ring and put it back together and see if it stops ticking. If it does then he may be alright but it could cause bearing damage that may not be noticed right away. It could also be the springs making the ticking. I have PRC duals in mine and the valvetrain is NOISY now after that. I always set aside a good amount of time in case stuff goes wrong on big projects because something always does go wrong wether it's a big or small issue. My clutch, thank god, went off with only a minor issue of getting the wrong couplers from a vendor.

 

If it is the oil pump o-ring, I just went through this. I didnt put the rack or anything in the car to make sure it was all fine after my cam install. I was getting 50-60 cold, 40ish warm. Then as soon as I went for a test spin I was getting 19psi warm.

I ended up pulling the crossmember and lifting the motor. WAY EASIER then pulling the rack! Also this only took me 3 hours from start to finish, This was just going off looking at the car no manuals and this is my first C5 and first time working on it!

After I pulled the pan I installed the oil pump side first then bolted it to the windage to ensure proper fit.


Now I get about 45ish Crusing and 32-35 warm idle on ****ty 10w30.

Good luck! I would pull it apart for peace of mind.

Jay

 

I installed the Tesxas Speed ported LS6 pump and when warm and at 50 mph I'm getting 50 lbs. I was so carefully with the o-ring. I used the Fel-Pro ring.

 

I am really concerned about the fact it stalled and wont start now. We never drove it below 25psi oil so I dont think we could have damaged it. The ticking would come and go but never cause the car to stall.

 

Codes?

 

None

 

None, I had the maf turned off to get the fuel trims in line when it stalled. It almost seemed like an electrical thing but I loaded the original tune running the MAF and nothing changed. It cranks right up bit either stalls out immediatly or tries to sit at 2-300rpm with 5-6psi oil pressure then stall back out. The motor was really noisey (ticking) so we decided not to keep cranking it. Im assuming the noise was the lifters not getting any oil.

 

You are making the right choice, to not contiue to run the engine. If you have manually checked the codes with the DIC, and come up with nothing, the only thing to do is have it towed to a shop for repair.

 

Yea we dont have plans on cranking it anymore. I am hoping it is just the o-ring and lack of oil pressure to the lifters. Also just to mention the car ran fine for over 30 mins in SD mode before this happened.

 

Well this worries me, I would still check the oring, but if it was fine for 30min of tuning then after some hard pulls was low I would be worried.

Or just hope the oil got hot and thin enough to seap past the oring.

Jay

 

Naa we were just tuning his low rpm/cruising cells in his ve table, we are nowhere near ready to tune for WOT. The max this car has seen as far as rpms go is maybe 4000 since the cam install.

 

my mechanic is in the process of tuning my cam install as well and so far we havent let it go over 1200rpms. Just too risky w/o a wideband. Keep us updated...

 

Also interested in updates. I would say get the pan on and make sure the oil pump o-ring is good, then go over all the electrical to insure it is all connected good.

I have read alot about issues with the coil pack harness on older motors after removing coils. Sometimes the wires get brittle and crack.

Get a multimeter and check the resistance from all the coil wires to the PCM to make sure its all good. Check to make usre ur getting 5V referance where needed and 12+V on all Pink wires (ignition)

The not starting thing could be some kinda minor overlooked thing.

Sometimes the dumbest things get overlooked,ive done it many times lol.

Jay

 

Another thing, did you guys put a new oil filter on the car after not going over 41psi?

I know when I first got my 383LT1 running in my old Iroc, I had perfect oil pressure 75 cold, then like 30-40 running warm with 20w-50 royal purple. Then all of a sudden I went WOT and it would budge over 30 psi warm. So I put on a mechanical gauge, same thing. so said screw it ill change the filter to a AC delco (i put on a fram synthetic (barf))

Oil pressure came right up!

Just another simple thing to check. Id hate to see you guys pull the motor apart and find out its something basic.

Jay