**The Mysterious Case of the Low Oil Pressure**

I've been working on my van's engine, trying to diagnose an issue with the oil pressure. It seems completely normal when it's cold, but as soon as I start driving, the oil pressure drops significantly. I'm not sure what's causing this problem and I've tried various things to get a better understanding of what's going on.

To diagnose the issue, I decided to take a closer look at the engine's performance under different conditions. When VTEC engages, the oil pressure drops from around 60 psi to almost 50 psi. This is unusual, as the recommended oil pressure range for my engine is typically higher than that. I'm not sure what's causing this drop in pressure, but it's definitely something I need to investigate further.

I decided to take a closer look at the rocker assembly and checked to see if any of the pins were missing or damaged. It turns out that some people have reported similar issues with their own engines, where the pin was either missing or had come loose over time. This could be a possible cause of my engine's low oil pressure.

However, I'm not sure what's causing the issue and I don't want to make any assumptions. To further diagnose the problem, I decided to remove the camshafts and timing belt from the engine. This will give me access to the rocker arms and allow me to inspect them for any damage or wear.

I was lucky enough to have Todd come by and help me with the diagnosis. He took a look at the engine's components and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. However, I'm still not sure what's causing the issue and I need to take further action.

To try and resolve the problem, I decided to Jack up the van and pull off the oil pan. This will give me access to the oil pump and allow me to inspect it for any damage or wear. I plan to shim the oil pump in an attempt to increase the oil pressure. If this doesn't work, we may need to replace the oil pump altogether.

I'm also planning to switch to a heavier weight oil, which seems to be more effective at maintaining high oil pressures in my other vehicles. For example, my hatchback is running 20W50 and it's been performing much better than my van, which is only running 10W40.

**The Plan for Tomorrow**

For tomorrow, I plan to use the shims on the oil pump to see if they can increase the oil pressure. If this doesn't work, we'll have to take a closer look at the engine's components and try to identify the source of the problem. We may need to replace the oil pump or inspect other parts of the engine for any damage or wear.

I'm not sure what the outcome will be, but I'm hopeful that using shims on the oil pump will resolve the issue. If it doesn't work, we'll have to take a more aggressive approach and try to diagnose the problem further. In the meantime, I appreciate your patience and understanding as I work to get my van's engine running smoothly again.

**A Lesson Learned**

As I worked on my van's engine, I realized that sometimes things don't go as planned. I've been working on engines for a while now, but this case was different. It taught me the importance of being prepared and having multiple solutions at my disposal.

I also learned that sometimes you need to think outside the box and try new approaches when diagnosing an issue. In this case, using shims on the oil pump may seem like a simple solution, but it just goes to show that even the most experienced technicians can learn something new every day.

Thanks for watching, and I'll see what tomorrow brings!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on guys so yesterday we got the shifter all bolted down in the minivan and we're already running out of daylight but we're gonna try to drive it around some more I think we're gonna head over to PFI and see if the van will make it we did put an alternator on it so we should be good there there's still no radiator fan but I can always blast the heater if it starts to get too hot but it is pretty cold out so I don't think that would be an issue as long as the van is moving I don't think it's gonna overheat so yeah we're gonna take it over there real quick just to kind of cruise it around start to put some miles on it because now I want to put about like I said 50 miles or so and then we'll be able to put some better oil in it but uh yeah we just got to get it broken in so no better way to do that then to put some miles on her so we're gonna go head over to PFI right now well the VAM made it to PFI and brain got it strapped down and I didn't plan on putting it on the dyno whatsoever but I guess we're gonna throw it on there it does have some bugs we're gonna work out so we got the wideband hooked up to it and one of the main issues were having with it right now is that it bogs really bad in first gear and sorry it's so dark out but uh to keep it running we have to have these two back vacuum nipples open or else one of those are blocked off it'll just die so we're gonna try to figure that out and just get it running a little better and there's also no BTech either what what do you mean alright so where'd you just find a shiny light back over here so I guess we had the IAC plugged in wrong he had the idol control motor or the air temperature sensor plugged into the idol control motor an idol controlled learner's probably that's probably why I didn't idle very good it's very common I see it there so we just have to extend the wires to go to the air intake temperature sensor and then we'll be good on that and this sucks though it's so dark everyone's gonna be complaining and this is the thing I need to figure out how to bypass oh yeah I just have that plugged into the harness here I'll do that in five seconds you figure it out yes I did so we don't need this anymore no cuz yeah you get this no take it into the trash show everyone how to get rid of it all right so all Honda's will have this relay and you can see all the big wires that go into it well it's got this little wire right here this little one runs all the way out to the park neutral Parker neutral safety deal so that does is when it's plugged in it grounds this wire and makes it tore this relay will kick on once it gets it's 12 volt switch so what we're gonna do is we can cut this wire good take it straight to ground and then it'll start all the time where we can cut this wire take two clutch switch and they'll work like stock we'll have one side go to a ground the side go right to this wire clutch switch and then so the clutch has to be all the way in for it to crank right just like it would factory yeah I'd rather have that so we don't start it in gear and all I accident you can see these wires everything's there except it just needs this ground trigger which is normally done by that so we're gonna get rid of that we're just gonna take this to the switch out of the switch to gown done easy easy peasy sweet so Brenda's got the tech wired in for me the harness that came with the van didn't at all for VTech so if you just threw up it in there and then ran a wire from a four which is the pin out on that ECU just straight to the cylinders straight to the ECU so it should have VTech now and right now he's just tuning out the idol all right so we've had her on the Dinah for a bit she did just make 124 wheel horsepower nothing crazy but brent cleaned up the tune quite a bit but an issue we ran into is that it's not really building very much oil pressure I kind of noticed that when brent was doing a pool it was only staying in like 35 to 40 psi and it wouldn't climb which it's supposed to climb much higher than that so not really sure what happened there's a chance this oil pump could be going weak and they're telling me that I might have forgot like some pins on the like lobes inside the head for the VTEC like that is a possibility when we threw this thing together if one of those pins fell out and it could be losing oil pressure through there but I don't know it's not safe to rev it out right now but hopefully it should be safe to drive it home right yeah yeah because it is making oil pressure I'm just gonna make sure I have the gauge like where I can see it driving home but we're probably gonna have to pull the pan off and check some things I might replace the oil pump on this but yeah the VTEC screen was clean so there's no metal in there so it's running pretty good but not sure why it's low on oil pressure so we're gonna have to figure that out because that always sketches me out when they're low in the oil pressure and that's why I'm successful that's why I'm glad I get that's why I always have a gauge like out of all the gauges I made sure I have this one in here just so I could watch that a little pressure and wipe in okay yeah those are those are important but uh did you definitely cleaned it up quite a bit though like it runs way better now so we fixed a lot of things it did crack VTEC and the wiring is a lot better now but we just need to figure that out and she should be ready to go but yeah sucks we couldn't turn it up anymore or try to make any more power but we wanted to stop there just in case uh we're gonna hurt anything but yeah we got her on strap so we're gonna bring her home for tonight and then we'll look into well it did cool off a little bit but I don't get it now it's going up to 60 psi when I run it like it seems way better now maybe gauge so you're all pressure came back that shows like VTech can hit solo that will spike at the end yeah should have been turned on way back here so you can see where VTEC was turning on then and these these pulls was super fat because I cleaned it up we're coming up but VTEC just would hit right here where the end when I was supposed to get away sooner when I was a little bit right here so there's something that's a few yeah I'll figure out but either way thanks for the tune it definitely helped a lot even just backing it out now it actually dries yeah I was struggling it was like bogging down I was so lean like a teen you know that's not good whoops it's getting now though that's why I brought it here I was actually really glad then we put it on the done I probably would've never seen notice the gauge because I never watch it when I'm driving so and then we'd have been square one in the end yep so it was good we put it on the dyno even though I didn't plan on it the dyno solves all the problems unless you're Todd we ha doesn't like the dyno I do but that's where his car breaks there's points when I have to poor CRX ya gotta get her fixed up bro Oh she'll gotta make the power sign if this is a little hard to see but I'm driving back right now it's just under 50 psi which is pretty good and it's kind of weird because it wouldn't come over 40 psi on the dyno but now it's just under 50 but it won't climb any higher than that if I do bring it up higher in the RPM which it should be climbing friend told me about 10 psi for every thousand rpm it's like the general rule and right when it hits about 50 psi this stops even if the RPM keeps climbing so either the oil pump is definitely worn out or I might have put something together wrong or you know something came loose so we'll have to figure it out but at least there is pressure so it is safe to cruise around 50 psi when you're cruising is still plenty so as long as there's oil pressure there we should be alright so I'm not really worried about it's not crazy low or anything okay so it's the following day last night we had that issue with the oil pressure dropping in the van and right now we have the gauge taped to the windshield because that's as far as it will reach unless we extend the wires and we're gonna take it around the block real quick and just kind of double-check what the issue is so it is cold right now idle it's just above 70 psi which seems completely normal to give it a little red thumbs up to 80 so sorry that's hard to see but when it's cold it seems like the oil pressure is fine and yeah we're just gonna let it warm up and see what it cruises that and then we'll probably bring it back we're probably gonna have to rip into the motor a little bit and find out why it's losing oil pressure so it's probably really hard to see my like right when VTEC engages it drops from about 60 psi almost down to 50 when it to be climbing so that could tell us they might they might be right about like missing one of the pins in the rocker assembly online earlier today and said a lot of people have the same issue where like I forgot to put the pin in or somehow up it is missing and right when VTEC hits instead of that oil like you know pushing up against the pin and engaging that figure rocker arm or whatever there's no pin in there so the oil just flows and that's like it'll drop oil pressure because there's nothing to the oil back you just lettin it all out so I'm not sure we're enough to take it apart because it should be higher than that but at least it's not only dangerously low at least when we're cruising it's about 55 to 60 which is pretty normal so it's nothing to be worried about boosted on it unless it's making a little gotta get her and it sucks it struck the side a little bit alright guys so we just went ahead and got the camshafts out we got the timing belt off and you know all that stuff out of the way so we could look at if these rocker arms right here had the pins in them and everything is there so I don't think anything is wrong with the head Todd came by as well he kind of checked some things out for us and everything looks good so we're still not sure what the issue could be so what we're gonna try to do in the morning tomorrow is we're gonna Jack this thing up pull the pan off and you can actually get to the oil pump without taking it off and we're going to shim the oil pump which on a factory oil pump you just pretty much take this bolt off and there's a spring with a little piston in there and you put a couple washers on there and it increases the oil pressure quite a bit on the stock pump we'll show how to do that tomorrow but we're gonna try that out and hopefully we will see a difference in the oil pressure hopefully it rises if not then this thing will probably need a new oil pump but if it comes down to that we would definitely put a new oil pump on there it would just kind of suck because it's pretty tight on space down there but I'm sure we could get it done so we'll see what happens tomorrow hopefully we'll be able to shim it and that will give us a lot more oil pressure we're also gonna be trying a heavier weight oil after we do this so right now we're running 10 W 40 in the van and for instance my hatch has 20 W 50 and I see much better oil pressures in the hatch and that thicker oil should help bring up the oil pressure a bit so hopefully shimming it will do the trick if not we'll have to rip into it a little more and probably change out that pump as well if you guys have any ideas of what it could be please sure to let me know in the comments you guys did figure out my issue with why it wouldn't crank over and we were able to figure that out right away this one might be a little more difficult but yeah it just cruises a little low on oil pressure won't come above 60 psi in any rpm and when it does cross over into VTEC it does drop to about almost 50 psi so yeah let me know what you guys think this video did not go as planned I was not expecting to have to turn to the motor you know I've put a couple of these together for my hatch so I have a pretty good idea of how these go together I'm honestly not sure what's happening so maybe it is just a weak oil pump and yes we'll find out tomorrow because if we put these shims in and the oil pressure doesn't change at all then something's definitely off with the pump and I guess there could also be a possibility that the glow shift oil pressure gauge could be messing up but I really don't think it's that because it reads much higher at idle and we'll never see those oil pressures again when it's fully warmed up so I don't I think the gauge is working properly but yeah we're definitely gonna look into it tomorrow but that's gonna be it for tonight guys and as always thanks for watchingwhat's going on guys so yesterday we got the shifter all bolted down in the minivan and we're already running out of daylight but we're gonna try to drive it around some more I think we're gonna head over to PFI and see if the van will make it we did put an alternator on it so we should be good there there's still no radiator fan but I can always blast the heater if it starts to get too hot but it is pretty cold out so I don't think that would be an issue as long as the van is moving I don't think it's gonna overheat so yeah we're gonna take it over there real quick just to kind of cruise it around start to put some miles on it because now I want to put about like I said 50 miles or so and then we'll be able to put some better oil in it but uh yeah we just got to get it broken in so no better way to do that then to put some miles on her so we're gonna go head over to PFI right now well the VAM made it to PFI and brain got it strapped down and I didn't plan on putting it on the dyno whatsoever but I guess we're gonna throw it on there it does have some bugs we're gonna work out so we got the wideband hooked up to it and one of the main issues were having with it right now is that it bogs really bad in first gear and sorry it's so dark out but uh to keep it running we have to have these two back vacuum nipples open or else one of those are blocked off it'll just die so we're gonna try to figure that out and just get it running a little better and there's also no BTech either what what do you mean alright so where'd you just find a shiny light back over here so I guess we had the IAC plugged in wrong he had the idol control motor or the air temperature sensor plugged into the idol control motor an idol controlled learner's probably that's probably why I didn't idle very good it's very common I see it there so we just have to extend the wires to go to the air intake temperature sensor and then we'll be good on that and this sucks though it's so dark everyone's gonna be complaining and this is the thing I need to figure out how to bypass oh yeah I just have that plugged into the harness here I'll do that in five seconds you figure it out yes I did so we don't need this anymore no cuz yeah you get this no take it into the trash show everyone how to get rid of it all right so all Honda's will have this relay and you can see all the big wires that go into it well it's got this little wire right here this little one runs all the way out to the park neutral Parker neutral safety deal so that does is when it's plugged in it grounds this wire and makes it tore this relay will kick on once it gets it's 12 volt switch so what we're gonna do is we can cut this wire good take it straight to ground and then it'll start all the time where we can cut this wire take two clutch switch and they'll work like stock we'll have one side go to a ground the side go right to this wire clutch switch and then so the clutch has to be all the way in for it to crank right just like it would factory yeah I'd rather have that so we don't start it in gear and all I accident you can see these wires everything's there except it just needs this ground trigger which is normally done by that so we're gonna get rid of that we're just gonna take this to the switch out of the switch to gown done easy easy peasy sweet so Brenda's got the tech wired in for me the harness that came with the van didn't at all for VTech so if you just threw up it in there and then ran a wire from a four which is the pin out on that ECU just straight to the cylinders straight to the ECU so it should have VTech now and right now he's just tuning out the idol all right so we've had her on the Dinah for a bit she did just make 124 wheel horsepower nothing crazy but brent cleaned up the tune quite a bit but an issue we ran into is that it's not really building very much oil pressure I kind of noticed that when brent was doing a pool it was only staying in like 35 to 40 psi and it wouldn't climb which it's supposed to climb much higher than that so not really sure what happened there's a chance this oil pump could be going weak and they're telling me that I might have forgot like some pins on the like lobes inside the head for the VTEC like that is a possibility when we threw this thing together if one of those pins fell out and it could be losing oil pressure through there but I don't know it's not safe to rev it out right now but hopefully it should be safe to drive it home right yeah yeah because it is making oil pressure I'm just gonna make sure I have the gauge like where I can see it driving home but we're probably gonna have to pull the pan off and check some things I might replace the oil pump on this but yeah the VTEC screen was clean so there's no metal in there so it's running pretty good but not sure why it's low on oil pressure so we're gonna have to figure that out because that always sketches me out when they're low in the oil pressure and that's why I'm successful that's why I'm glad I get that's why I always have a gauge like out of all the gauges I made sure I have this one in here just so I could watch that a little pressure and wipe in okay yeah those are those are important but uh did you definitely cleaned it up quite a bit though like it runs way better now so we fixed a lot of things it did crack VTEC and the wiring is a lot better now but we just need to figure that out and she should be ready to go but yeah sucks we couldn't turn it up anymore or try to make any more power but we wanted to stop there just in case uh we're gonna hurt anything but yeah we got her on strap so we're gonna bring her home for tonight and then we'll look into well it did cool off a little bit but I don't get it now it's going up to 60 psi when I run it like it seems way better now maybe gauge so you're all pressure came back that shows like VTech can hit solo that will spike at the end yeah should have been turned on way back here so you can see where VTEC was turning on then and these these pulls was super fat because I cleaned it up we're coming up but VTEC just would hit right here where the end when I was supposed to get away sooner when I was a little bit right here so there's something that's a few yeah I'll figure out but either way thanks for the tune it definitely helped a lot even just backing it out now it actually dries yeah I was struggling it was like bogging down I was so lean like a teen you know that's not good whoops it's getting now though that's why I brought it here I was actually really glad then we put it on the done I probably would've never seen notice the gauge because I never watch it when I'm driving so and then we'd have been square one in the end yep so it was good we put it on the dyno even though I didn't plan on it the dyno solves all the problems unless you're Todd we ha doesn't like the dyno I do but that's where his car breaks there's points when I have to poor CRX ya gotta get her fixed up bro Oh she'll gotta make the power sign if this is a little hard to see but I'm driving back right now it's just under 50 psi which is pretty good and it's kind of weird because it wouldn't come over 40 psi on the dyno but now it's just under 50 but it won't climb any higher than that if I do bring it up higher in the RPM which it should be climbing friend told me about 10 psi for every thousand rpm it's like the general rule and right when it hits about 50 psi this stops even if the RPM keeps climbing so either the oil pump is definitely worn out or I might have put something together wrong or you know something came loose so we'll have to figure it out but at least there is pressure so it is safe to cruise around 50 psi when you're cruising is still plenty so as long as there's oil pressure there we should be alright so I'm not really worried about it's not crazy low or anything okay so it's the following day last night we had that issue with the oil pressure dropping in the van and right now we have the gauge taped to the windshield because that's as far as it will reach unless we extend the wires and we're gonna take it around the block real quick and just kind of double-check what the issue is so it is cold right now idle it's just above 70 psi which seems completely normal to give it a little red thumbs up to 80 so sorry that's hard to see but when it's cold it seems like the oil pressure is fine and yeah we're just gonna let it warm up and see what it cruises that and then we'll probably bring it back we're probably gonna have to rip into the motor a little bit and find out why it's losing oil pressure so it's probably really hard to see my like right when VTEC engages it drops from about 60 psi almost down to 50 when it to be climbing so that could tell us they might they might be right about like missing one of the pins in the rocker assembly online earlier today and said a lot of people have the same issue where like I forgot to put the pin in or somehow up it is missing and right when VTEC hits instead of that oil like you know pushing up against the pin and engaging that figure rocker arm or whatever there's no pin in there so the oil just flows and that's like it'll drop oil pressure because there's nothing to the oil back you just lettin it all out so I'm not sure we're enough to take it apart because it should be higher than that but at least it's not only dangerously low at least when we're cruising it's about 55 to 60 which is pretty normal so it's nothing to be worried about boosted on it unless it's making a little gotta get her and it sucks it struck the side a little bit alright guys so we just went ahead and got the camshafts out we got the timing belt off and you know all that stuff out of the way so we could look at if these rocker arms right here had the pins in them and everything is there so I don't think anything is wrong with the head Todd came by as well he kind of checked some things out for us and everything looks good so we're still not sure what the issue could be so what we're gonna try to do in the morning tomorrow is we're gonna Jack this thing up pull the pan off and you can actually get to the oil pump without taking it off and we're going to shim the oil pump which on a factory oil pump you just pretty much take this bolt off and there's a spring with a little piston in there and you put a couple washers on there and it increases the oil pressure quite a bit on the stock pump we'll show how to do that tomorrow but we're gonna try that out and hopefully we will see a difference in the oil pressure hopefully it rises if not then this thing will probably need a new oil pump but if it comes down to that we would definitely put a new oil pump on there it would just kind of suck because it's pretty tight on space down there but I'm sure we could get it done so we'll see what happens tomorrow hopefully we'll be able to shim it and that will give us a lot more oil pressure we're also gonna be trying a heavier weight oil after we do this so right now we're running 10 W 40 in the van and for instance my hatch has 20 W 50 and I see much better oil pressures in the hatch and that thicker oil should help bring up the oil pressure a bit so hopefully shimming it will do the trick if not we'll have to rip into it a little more and probably change out that pump as well if you guys have any ideas of what it could be please sure to let me know in the comments you guys did figure out my issue with why it wouldn't crank over and we were able to figure that out right away this one might be a little more difficult but yeah it just cruises a little low on oil pressure won't come above 60 psi in any rpm and when it does cross over into VTEC it does drop to about almost 50 psi so yeah let me know what you guys think this video did not go as planned I was not expecting to have to turn to the motor you know I've put a couple of these together for my hatch so I have a pretty good idea of how these go together I'm honestly not sure what's happening so maybe it is just a weak oil pump and yes we'll find out tomorrow because if we put these shims in and the oil pressure doesn't change at all then something's definitely off with the pump and I guess there could also be a possibility that the glow shift oil pressure gauge could be messing up but I really don't think it's that because it reads much higher at idle and we'll never see those oil pressures again when it's fully warmed up so I don't I think the gauge is working properly but yeah we're definitely gonna look into it tomorrow but that's gonna be it for tonight guys and as always thanks for watching\n"