jmporsche944

Would a leaking cork gasket at the rear of the cam tower cause the oil pressure light to come on (guage reads slightly below 1)? The PS pulley is correctly torqued down, but I have one hell of an oil leak out of that cork gasket. Its only at idle.
Thanks

Jeff

jmporsche944

anyone?

944_S_TYPE

How hard is it to change the cork gasket...(I have a "S") If not too bad just change it then Check again.... Just a little troubleshooting.

Dave in Chicago

The 3 little bolts holding that piece on have a tendency to loosen. I used to check them once every couple of months in my '88 NA.

KuHL 951

A leak from the gasket shouldn't cause you to loose oil pressure. It's just a gasket and sees whatever pressure is in the cam cover and is not part of the pressurized lubrication loop. 1-bar is scary, are you using 10-30 wt oil? The cork gasket is real easy to replace, I dumped the gasket altogether and just used Yamabond, cork dries out much too fast. Post the rest of your oil pressure symptoms(psi @ idle cold and hot, and cruise) it will help in figuring out the problem.

jmporsche944

I agree, 1 bar is very scary! Its since I changed the timing belt, I pinched the P/S pulley and it threw off my oil pressure. So this weekend I took off the pinched one and put on a new one. I torqued it to a little over the 155 ft/lb spec. Yet, I still have the oil pressure problems. Could the balance belt gear behind the ps pulley be on a little crooked causing problems? I get a little under 1 bar at idle (Light comes on) when the engine is warm. When the engins is cold, the pressure is pretty high, about 4.5 at start, and drops to about 3 until engine warms up. Once warm, I get about 2-3 while cruising, and a tad under 1 at idle.

Any help is much appreciated, this car is driving me insane right now. Ive got this oil pressure problem, Ive got the rear cam tower gasket pissing oil all over my headers making a nice smoke show. I just got done replaceing clutch master/slave cylinders. My car is overheating.. which I believe is due to my passenger side fan dying. Im about to drive this damn thing off a cliff.

TIA

Kevin Baker

I'd suggest starting with the pulley. Tear it all down and make sure that the little washer that goes behind the crank pulley is in correctly. Make sure that it's torqued down to 150 ft/lbs. After that, try putting a manual gauge onto the car to see what the oil pressure really is. The guage on the dash can be off. Remember these cars are notorious for funny instrument readings with bad grounds.

With +/- 160K on the motor, 20w50 oil I'm right on 5 bar at cold idle, 4.8-5 bar at any rpm above 2000, and 3.5-4 bar at warm idle.