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Rebuilt EA82, low oil pressure and ticking.


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Hey,

 

fresh rebuild on an EA82.  starts right up nice, but ticks and reads very low oil pressure.   havent tested with a good pressure gauge yet, but Its plainly obvious that the oil pressure is actually low, even if the gauge is crappy.  it reads 0 and ticks, if you give it a decent amount of gas it will go up to about 20ish and quiet down for a few seconds, then drops again and starts clattering. 

 

havent run it for long for obvious reasons.

 

the Oring for the oil pump (normal large oring, not the mickey mouse one) just didnt seem to fit well, and may have gotten damaged during installation.  the oring on the one that was pulled out was very flat and wide, but the new one was nice and round but fit extremely tight when installing the pump.  is the true factory oring a special one, or was it just flattened by time and we just messed it up on the install.

 

this is my go too problem for right now, but is there anything else to check that can cause low pressure?  the pump ran good pressure before the motor was pulled, the only thing changed is the seals.  im guessing the most likely cause is the seal sucking air, since it will raise pressure if rev'd, but just wont maintain it or get high enough.  are their any adjustments on the pump?

 

plan for tomorrow is a subaru dealer oil pump seal kit and a look see.  is there anyone with experience with it that can testify that they dealer one is better or special than a standard oring?

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...the oring on the one that was pulled out was very flat and wide, but the new one was nice and round but fit extremely tight when installing the pump...

 

Usually old ones Flattens by usage.

 

 

...is there anything else to check that can cause low pressure? ...

 

Motor Oil with Too high Viscosity number and Wrong Oil Filter.

 

Kind Regards.

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When you unscrew the oil filter is the check ball still visable on the filter mounting area? I have seen the EA82s' blow the check valve out of the pump and in to the filter more than once. The check ball is just "staked in" to the pump housing. It then gets discarded at the next oil change when the filter gets replaced. It is easily overlooked.  I just rebuit an EA82 and it had the same symptoms. A $6.00 used oil pump solved the problem for me.

Edited by Crazyeights
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I rebuilt my oil pump - replace the shaft seal, the mickey mouse gasket and the o-ring below the 4-lobe gear in rear of unit.

When you said you resealed the ea82, did you replace the metal reinforced o-rings in the cam tower?

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Was just about ready to hit send rdweninger...

 

so reading some more were wondering about the orings between the heads and cam tower.

 

pulled the oil pump yesterday, seals looked good, relief is in good shape, ball bearing is there and springy, nothing mechanically wrong that we can see, reinstalled with some new seals that fit better than the ones from the kit, and same issue.  also it was ran for quite a while by me in my other car and when I parked it there were no ticking or oil issues.

 

we didnt buy seperate cam tower orings and I read that they dont come in most reseal kits.  our next bet is that we have the wrong orings there and its causeing issues.  going to pull the cam towers today, so chime in if theres anything else we should check

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ugh bad day for it today.

 

so since we didnt use the right orings between the cam tower and head, we pulled the engine back out and installed the right subaru direct rubber/metal washer seals.  also checked the relief valves and all seem normal.  put it back together and it ran like spoob till it died (likely a broken timing belt).

 

still clattering, still low oil pressure

 

so new oil pump seals (shaft seal, mickey mouse seal, shaft o-ring), checked all the relief valves, correct cam tower o-rings, and still noise.  symptoms are low oil pressure and constant medium level motor clatter. 

 

so were going to put my old motor back in so im drivable for work, and take another look at it on the stand.  check the individual lifters, and do some more research.  may attempt a new oil pump but I dont like just throwing parts at something when I ran the parts on it now for a long time. 

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When the rebuild was done, did you replace the lifters, or bleed down the old ones and reuse them?  Either way, it's going to take at least 30 mins. of idling for them to pump up again. 

 

Until you put a manual pressure gauge on it, you aren't going to know for sure what your pressure is, but even with good pressure the lifters take awhile to pump up. 

 

(the only engine which I remember having a metal/rubber o-ring on the cam towers is the ER27...are you positive you got the correct ones?)

 

Emily

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1.  replacing the oil pump has solved TOD multiple times for people.  i have no idea why and i've never seen the oil pumps be "bad" or have any notable issues - but replacing them fixes TOD often.

 

2.  were any of the HLA's stuck or problematic or did you check them?
3.  is the noise located to one area or multiple?  if it's just one area then it could just be one bad HLA

 

i'd try another oil pump.

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We checked them, but may have had the wrong tolerance in mind. They all compressed, but very slightly. Some a bit more than others though.

 

The motor was one that ran and ran well before we pulled it. No ticks, good pressure, etc. Origionally i was,just gonna have him do head gaskets and timing set but we decided to do the whole buiness while we were at it. I cant see how an oil pump can go bad while it was sutting there unless its a seal issue.

 

Can you check the front shaft seal? Hit it with some air and see if it leaks?

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so you did lower end bearings and all that jazz - were there issues or mileage that prompted that?

 

that's good your HLA's all moved and you took note.  the noisy HLA's that i've seen were entirely seized, I couldn't compress them even with a C Clamp and they were previously overheated/driven with oil/coolant mixing.

 

i don't think there's a way to check the front shaft seal.

 

i've had a 100% sucess rate fixing TOD by replacing pumps, i've even sent pumps to people struggling with TOD and not being able to figure it out....and it worked.  i don't know why and it doesn't make sense sometimes, but it works.  i wish i knew why one pump was problematic and another wasn't.

 

but none of these engines were disassembled and rebuilt, so who knows on yours, i think that opens up higher probability of other causes.

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Yah, were talking about going back to bearings and checking our work. Yah its noisy but its noisy all over and we checked the sending units on my old running motor so were for sure getting extremely low oil pressure, especially compared to what it was. It quiets down if you give it some rpms, so i really think its an oiling issue

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