Fired that weird engine up.

Good news and again bad news.

Good news is the cam timing is spot on.

Quickly forgot about that success and moved on the next bad news. After about 7mins when the engine got up to 80C which is normal operation, oil pressure triggered my ECU's low warning alarm. 40sec later the car was in the garage and shut off.

After reading on that, normally I should have 20psi at idle at the minimum. I was under 5. This happened too when I had my cams 180-deg out of phase, I even had 0psi on one gauge, however I believe under a certain small number it's less accurate. I have 2 oil pressure gauges, one for ECU and one for dash. They are of a completely different design and both were showing alarming results. They are located on the oil filter housing.

My guess is that when I removed the head I flushed all oil inside it and I changed the filter too, filled up to 75%. Maybe I didn't put enough oil back in the engine after that.
It's also possible my OEM dipstick is not very accurate due to the engine being installed at a slightly different angle than OEM.
In the last minute of running I was hearing the lifters louder than usual and more than at cold start. This makes me think it was oil starving. Or there is air in the oil and I would need to flush and replace.

I put more in now, will probably add even more tonight. Hopefully weather will allow me to re-start tomorrow and hopefully the oil level was the problem. Oil pump was new and did work well before the timing issue.

At cold start I also have a low level, 54psi, should be around 80-90.


Again, if it's oil level, it would be my mistake.
What happens if I put too much oil in the engine? I'll google that.