SR20DET not getting oil to head

Hey guys,

I’m hoping someone can shed some light on why my engine is not getting oil to the cam journals or oilers. It is a fresh engine with brand new oem oil pump which was primed ect. It has been started twice for about 10-20seconds with 68 psi of oil pressure at idle and cranked fast for over a minute with no rocker cover on and the cams are dry with no oil flow from the oilers. The timing chain squirter is flowing good though.

It’s a s14/15 VCT motor which still retains vct, this is the 2nd time this has been built and I’m having the same problem again. The last oil pump had remax billet gears in it which we thought had the internal gear was backwards hence no flow to the head. But even now with a new oem pump same problem.

The oil cooler and remote filter are plumbed correctly and my pressure gauge is on the return side of the oil block and it is reading 68psi.

I’m really struggling to find what it could be. I will start to bypass the remote filter and cooler to see if I get a change. But I’ve had this setup working fine on a previous engine

The unique things on my engine are:

-Plazmaman billet girdle so the oil pickup has a 10mm spacer (this is torqued and sealed)

-Mazworx timing chain squirter threaded and taped with a bit of 577 to seal the thread

-Darton sleeves 90mm bore

-Mazworx 90mm head gasket which is 100% match to an oem one

-Mazworx 1/2” head studs

-Tomei n2 oil block to aeroflow remote filter and cooler

Any ideas?

Im thinking is there anyway a machining error could be bleeding oil pressure from the head? I’ve has a few sr’s although this is the most serious one I have built and never encountered this before.

I would be tempted to remove a couple of thing and attach and air over oil pump to the system ideally or just feed compressed air into it at different points to see if it comes out where you expect. It sounds like a gasket isn't lined up or something is back to front if there is nothing moving through.

I believe the problem you have is the oversize head studs. The oil feed from the block to the cylinder head actually comes up past one of the head studs so it relies on you having enough clearance between the stud and the hole in the head. I'd bet that this hasn't been drilled out sufficiently and the new 1/2" studs are a tight (ish) fit.

That makes a lot of sense Andre, and I was thinking it had to be something like that. This motor has been built twice and I have just paid the machinist to repair my damaged head after the last build and threw away a set of Naprec rockers and Tomei cams because of damage. I thought the problem was that I had installed my billet oil pump rotor backwards as it was not reference marked so after changing from the billet oil pump back to a new oem pump and reinstalling it and getting it running again I am left with the same problem. Very frustrating!

Should head stud clearance be something my machinist should have picked up?

That seams to be the problem just pulled the head off and a quick measure of the stud holes with verniers makes it about .3mm of clearance. Studs are 12.66mm and the head holes are 12.88mm

i got hold of mazworx and they said drill it to 13.5mm or hand grind a grove.

There you go then! Happy I could help