Long story short - I have a 2006 type S that I bought from an owner who decided to continue to drive the car with an overheating motor, resulting in both the head and the block warping. To sum things up, I kept some of the bolt ons from the motor and went ahead and found a good deal on a K20A2 bottom end and a K20Z1 head. I freshened up both the head and block with all OEM parts including rings, bearings, valve seals, head gasket, etc, etc.

So once the car warms up, the oil light will start to flash, then shortly after it will stay lit. If I tap the gas or rev the car up, the light goes away, but as soon as it falls back to idle, the light illuminated again. I also get what seems to be whether a timing chain slap noise or a VTC actuator noise both of startup and at certain RPMs while driving. The VTC actuator is brand new OEM.

The oil pump, oil pump guides, oil pump chain, oil pump chain tensioner, timing chain, timing chain guides and timing chain tensioner are all brand new OEM.

I thought at first that maybe it was just an oil pressure switch problem, so I bought a new switch, but that didn’t do it, so I hooked up the oil pressure gauge in place of the switch and read the oil pressure.

According to the FSM, the oil pressure at idle should be 10 psi at minimum and 40 psi at 3,000 RPMs at minimum. Well, my idle pressure was around 4 psi and my 3,000 RPM pressure was around 25 psi, so my oil pressure is definitely lower than allowed.

As dumb as it may sound, I thought about just trying to shim the pump to bump up the oil pressure, but maybe I should just find the real issue it’s having.

Also, I changed the oil and put 10w40 in it to see if that would help, and it did not.

I’m not exactly sure where to continue going about this, so any help or advice is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

- DJ

From the codes written on the block and on the crank???

You didn’t mic the bearings and check clearances?

I apologize for coming off as rude - I shouldn’t have been so smart about it. I’m just really, really fed up with this motor. Coming from the world of B series, I’ve never ran into so many issues before. I can build a B series and be in spec with my eyes closed. Then again, I suppose this is the first K that I’ve gotten this in depth with...

Anyways, unfortunately I did not mic the main journals on the crank, I did not mic the bearings, I did not check the main journals in the block with tri-mics or a bore gauge, and I did not plastigage when I put the bearing in. As a CNC machinist who is always very meticulous with everything he does, and has a great deal of finesse, I’m very ashamed to say that, but unfortunately, just like everybody else in the world, I get to be in a great hurry sometimes too. This time, it just may have cost me some time and money that I didn’t want to spend.

Though I did not check any clearances, being a machinist - nothing stuck out to me on the crank or the journals in the block as far as machining marks go. In other words, it did not look like the crank was polished in any way, nor did it look like the main journals were align honed. Everything looked pretty ‘stock’ to me.

In hopes that my oil pressure issue is NOT coming from the main bearings (or maybe even the rod bearings), what else could I check? Does anybody have maybe a diagram on the whole oil pressure system, or a checklist of what all I can check? Maybe I am just missing an o-ring or a bolt of some sort may be loose. I’m trying to stay positive and have wishful thinking, as I won’t be a very happy camper if I have to pull that motor out again... Could my ($40) cheap oil pressure gauge be faulty by chance?

Anyways, here’s an update to what I did over the past few days - I shimmed the oil pump relief spring with a .070” shim and resealed the spring sealing bolt, I resealed the sealing bolt that goes into the main cap cover, I tried blowing compressed air through the port to the oil switch incase something was clogged up, but it seemed like the air moved through freely, and I changed the oil yet again and put a Honda OEM oil filter on it. The oil pressure is worse now than it was before. I get maybe 1-2 psi at idle now and about 15 psi at 3,000 RPMs.

I’m lost. Any suggestions?

I think at some point later today or tomorrow, I’m going to check the VTC solenoid and screen, along with the VTEC solenoid screen (even though they are both brand new), and probably run a bottle of some kind of detergent or maybe auto tranny fluid in the motor to free up a (hopefully) clogged oil passage.

If no luck from any of the above, I suppose I will start looking into bearings.