Some questions about oil temperatures and oil pressures for JDM B18C(R)

ASSISTANCE Hybrids & Advanced Aftermarket Engine Performance
1

I have been searching on Google and around on this site and a few other Honda enthusiasts sites and I haven’t been able to find the answers I’m looking for thats why I’m posting now.

First of all my car is,
92 GS
JDM B18C(R) swap in it
Has full PS, AC, ABS systems all installed, don’t think that matters but yeah…

Anyways I recently installed my oil pressure and oil temperature gauges using the oil filter sandwich plate adapter, and I thankfully was able to keep the stock oil cooler on the block as well.

These gauges have a neat feature that lets me set high and low warning points and if either point is reached the gauge with visually and audibly warn you about the problem. So of course what I’m looking for is the following:

Oil Temperature:
Maximum safe oil temperature -
Minimum doesn’t really matter because obviously when the car isn’t warm it’ll be going off all the time lol

Oil Pressure:
Maximum safe oil pressure -
Minimum safe oil pressure -

When I was at the local road course on Saturday I managed to make my oil temperature reach 250 degrees fahrenheit, pretty damn hot lol. And my coolant gauge was fine (just put in a brand new rad and thermostat)

Whats concerning is when I was at the road course and took my car off to rest and the oil was still that hot and also since I had burned some oil (thanks VTEC…) my oil pressure was reading around 8 or 9 PSI, and from what I’ve seen the absolute minimum should be 10 PSI, when this happened my engine was making a knocking noise because it wasn’t being properly lubricated. After letting it cool down and topping up my oil though all funny noises went away :slight_smile:

I’m using:
Castrol Edge full synthetic 5w30 oil (supposed to be good for 26 000 KM)
Fram full synthetic oil filter (supposed to be good for 11 000 KM)
And I change both every 4000-5000 KM.

This car is my daily driver but also my track car so the reason I would like to know these high and low warning points is so when I do take it on the track if I get a warning from either gauge then I know I have to get off the course and let it cool down.

The car has been doing very well though, done a bunch of full 30 minute road course sessions with no complaints :slight_smile:

2

as far as oil pressure is concerned, oil pressure is going to be about 75-80 psi at idle and can reach up to 110 psi i believe on some motors. anything under 75 would be a good warning point

3

I’m not too sure about that BLACK, those numbers are way too high especially your at idle numbers.

4

Yeah, those numbers are high, but not that high. You’ll have to search, but there’s a relief spring (not sure if that’s the correct term) in the oil pump which essentially bleeds off any excess pressure if the pressure reaches higher than a certain amount. Like I said, you’ll have to check to see what that high pressure is exactly, but it should be near 90PSI iirc.

This is the perfect type of topic to search your Helms for information, as well as some of the technical forums on H-T. Check out pg 8-7 in your Helms manual.

At operating temperature:
Minimum Oil Pressure @ idle = 10psi
Minimum Oil pressure @ 3000rpm = 50psi

My engine has around 1000 miles on it, so it’s probably going to have higher pressure than an older motor. But early on after startup I was 80+ PSI pretty much all of the time. It’s started to drop a little and now I’m usually in 30-50psi range for idle and very low rpm and as soon as you give it any more revs it pretty much pegs at 80-90+. (*I could be a bit off on those lower idle numbers as I’m usually not too worried since I know it’s away above what it needs to be. But if needed I could go fire up the car and get a more accurate number for you).

I’m not sure about oil temps though.

5

colin is right. when my engine is warm at idle im sittin at 30-35 psi and just crusing around im 70-80 and when im on it or high rev i peg my gauge at 100 psi and thats on a jdm b16

6

Thanks guys.

yeah i looked in the manual and saw those numbers too. i’ve got some numbers here from my engine…

with the car fully warmed up, oil temperature around 200 farenheit my oil pressure was sitting around 19 PSI today at idle of around 700-800 RPM.

when i’m just cruising around in 5th gear while warmed up around 3000 RPM my oil pressure will be somewhere like 60-70ish.

if i floor it revving up to 8000-8400 with the engine fully warmed up and oil temp around 200-210 my oil pressure will hit 75-90.

so anyways I’m definitely going to set my minimum oil pressure warning to 10 PSI. I’m not going to worry about setting the max oil pressure warning I don’t think because it kinda varies a lot and the only way it would get into dangerous ranges would be because of a blockage or a failed oil pump correct? maybe i’ll set the max warning to like 95 PSI.

as for oil temperatures I really want to know where to set my max oil temp too lol so I know when to get off of the track and let it cool down. right now I’m leaning towards setting it to 240.

7

Yeah, I don’t see a reason to set a max oil pressure warning light, you might have some spikes in pressure due to rpm changes (?) but there shouldn’t really be anything to worry about. It can’t hurt, but don’t set it and then freak out if it turns on.

Not sure about oil temps, I think you’re asking the wrong people. This forum typically doesn’t have very good answers for stuff like that. I’d head over to H-T and search the RR/AutoX forum to see what numbers people are seeing. I generally do most of my research over on H-T simply because there’s a much larger community of real race car drivers.

8

I’m coming into this conversation a bit late as most of the information you were looking for has been said already… But I’ll put up my two cents, just because :stuck_out_tongue:

When my motor is cold and I fire it up, my gauge reads about 80’ish PSI. Once the motor is warmed up it is around 30’ish PSI. And as others have said, when I give it some gas and rev high it goes to 80-95’ish.

The only thing that makes me wonder, is how/why your reading happens to be so low (<20PSI). When I had the guy build my motor and order me a pressure gauge, he said to make sure to watch the gauge and if it ever drops below 20PSI to shut the motor off as something is probably going wrong. Granted he is probably being overly cautious…

The factory dummy-light kicks on at 5 PSI (If I recall correctly), and most everyone says by the time that light comes on, damage is already being done to the motor due to oil starvation. Seeing that you’ve had readings of <10PSI makes me kinda nervous.

9

okay thanks i’ll check out honda-tech.com for some more answers.

yeah when i had the readings of 8-10 PSI my engine was making knocking noises so we shut it down and let it cool down and topped up the oil and that fixed the noises, obvi some damage must have been done but the engine is already old and I’ll be rebuilding it someday, its a spirited daily driven and goes to the road course 2-3 times a month so yeah… we listened to it with the broom handle trick with the oil topped up and oil temperature at normal ranges and pressure and normal ranges and everything in the top end and bottom end seemed happy so i’m not too worried at the moment.

10

Oh here’s another question for you guys. Do your oil pressure gauges make noise? My oil pressure gauge is brand new and it uses an electronic sending unit which I installed via a oil filter sandwich plate adapter. But the actually gauge itself hums along with the engine revs. Just wondering if thats normal or if I could possibly have a defective gauge lol…

11

My brothers gauge makes an odd noise… kind of like a rattling noise, hard to describe…

I havent really heard mine make noise, but I havent spent much time in my car at all… and the last time I started the car it was open header so, lol.

But ours are both mechanical, not electonic.

12

ahhh nuts lol. i’ll try to get a recording of the noise i’m hearing coming from my gauge, its a very distinct noise at least.

13

Mine doesn’t make any noise that I’ve noticed, it’s an Autometer mechanical (phantom series).

14

D’oh, forgot to add that… My brothers gauge and mine are both Autometer Phantom Series as well.

15

hmmm interesting. well my buddy bought one of the same gauges as me so when his is hooked up i’ll see if his makes a noise too. its obvious the noise is the motor inside the gauge though so i think its normal.

i recalled the peak values my gauges have recorded so far and oil temp was 250 and oil pressure was 90 so i set my peak warning to 240 and 95 for now and my minimum oil pressure warning is set to 10 PSI.

i was doing some testing yesterday and with the engine fully warmed up (oil temp around 200) at idle my oil pressure was chillin at 15 PSI. and at 3000 RPM in neutral it sits at 70 PSI.

also interesting is letting the car idle for a bit my stock oil cooler on the JDM B18C(R) does cool down the oil. I was pondering some sort of setup that would let me use the auto tranny cooler hookups on my radiator and hook them up to the oil cooler so that it would be like a remote oil cooler but i think that would affect the system too much right?