These gears with 2 added shims to the relief should be yielding higher cold start numbers. A contaminated relief should yield higher numbers.

Lower numbers can be contributed to excess bearing play, damaged gears, leaking oil pump housing, blocked oil pick up, relief collapsing due to really high initial pressures (somewhat unlikely)

Throw oil filters every 1k miles and open your old ones, these should give you better insight if you're wearing prematurely.

I didnt use any shims. Also, it’s been warm the past few weeks. The PSI mentioned is on a 85-90 degree day.

For what it's worth, the only time I have ever broken over 100 PSI on this particular car is a cold start in the Winter.

I called Boundary yesterday and they do recommend shimming +2 for the VQ platform. If I would have been more patient and done more research I would have figured that out before buttoning the engine up last year. Lessons learned. I purchased a low mileage replacement engine yesterday as well as the full pump assembly from Boundary. This will give me a fresh(er) motor to track with and I’ll keep the current engine on a stand to tinker on.

I keep reading that these pumps should be shimmed.

The extra pressure will do numbers on that relief.

Luckily for you, you can access the relief just by taking off the oil pan, may want to try this before just in case.

As previously mentioned, I'd guess the oil pump pressure relief valve is sticky and stuck open. Shims won't do anything to fix this other than just making it harder to open that valve in the first place. Replace the relief valve, it should be accessible if I recall right with only the oil pan removed.

Yes and no, the added volume and pressure this pump puts out might be triggering the relief too early causing a massive dump of pressure making it seem like it's sticking which is why a shim would work. It would compensate this force by compressing the spring a bit more.

I ended up getting a 2015 motor with 39k miles on it from an Infinity. I am having a shop install a full boundary pump assembly with +2 shims as well as remove the old motor and install the new one (hand surgery has me out of the garage for a while). Once it's all said and done I will do a new pump on the old engine and keep it as a spare. Question, the Infinity has the stock oil cooler so is that just extra cooling power coupled with my 34 row?

My oil pressure findings on my newly built engine with complete boundary oil pump with billet plate and 2 shims:
at 190-200F oil temp it runs about 35psi idle. Higher rpms and more load I already see 130psi or more. Definitely there is more oil pressure than stock pump. I have my oil pressure sensor connected to oil filter relocation sandwich plate.