Low oil pressure!

NissanTracker

IMHO,

I believe they purposely removed the oil gauge to mask the gallery gasket problem. It happened to my buddies 370z right after mine. I went to check for the gauge to see what the start up pressure was... nothing! I just chuckled. "If you don't see a problem, there is none".

I believe a lot of people mistook this as "oil consumption". Those gallery areas hold the pressure for the oil passages in the head. The oil pressure allows the components to essentially "float" while they are moving.

I started noticing it when pressure was at 15psi when warmed up and idling.... then it went to 10. Nissan still called this "OK". The problem gets worse when your in mid->high range RPM's and your not seeing more than 40psi. The components that are supposed to be "floating" by high pressure oil barriers are now going to start touching. On a couple of occasions, I would hold the rpms at 3K and I could hear an ugly tick... was losing oil pressure and something was rubbing.

Your really on the line when the VTC sensors start tripping Cels. Unfortunately, many that ran into this didn't catch it and had to replace the engine.