what is "normal" operating oil pressure level?

**dlynes** · 04-09-2009, 14:41

hey guys!

What is your normal driving condition, operating oil pressure level in your nsx?

normal as in, after car is warmed up, and just cruising around?

I had a new oil pump installed and it seems like my oil pressure is always at 7. My car use to always run at 4 or when I was accelerationg hard, WOT it was 6 or 7.

**C-speed** · 04-09-2009, 19:13

Sounds about right... general rule of thumb is you need about 10psi oil pressure for every 1000rpm.

**ATERPAK** · 04-10-2009, 11:34

On normal freeway speeds it seems to be around 80 psi which is around a 7 on the stock gauge. During idle and when it's warm or hot, expect it to be around 20 psi or so and on some stock gauges you may not see any pressure showing or just a click from the bottom.

I noticed that when I had the car new and using the break in oil, at idle there would be nothing registering on the stock gauge. Once I started moving then the gauge would start to register. Once I changed to Mobil 1 10/30w synthetic oil, it changed all the readings at idle. I could now see it registering above the first click and be a steady 6+ at freeway speeds.

I get these readings because I now have two sets of gauges for the car. The stock and a newer electronic Defi setup which also reads the oil temp. The Defi unit reads so much faster and shows how quickly the pressure drops when you go into Vtec. Never saw the pressure go below 40 psi during Vtec and or any hard cornering.

Al T.

P.S. 1 bar roughly equals 14.5 psi. So a reading of 6.5 bar on the stock gauge would be 94 psi. Since I was showing 80 psi that would equate to 5.51 bar. So if we are seeing around 6 to 7 on the gauge, how accurate is our stock gauge?

**dlynes** · 04-14-2009, 17:01

Originally Posted by C-speed

Sounds about right... general rule of thumb is you need about 10psi oil pressure for every 1000rpm.

my oil pressure on oem gauge, cluster reads 7 at 3,000 rmp

**gs963** · 04-14-2009, 17:07

The manuel says 10psi for idle and no less than 50 at 3000RPM. I thought the factory gauge was 10psi for each mark. It that wrong??

**usafdarkhorse** · 04-14-2009, 18:17

The NSX oil pressure gauge is measured in METRIC units.

kg/cm^2, not psi. You will have to convert from the OEM unit's metric reading in order to find the pressure in psi.

**dlynes** · 04-15-2009, 14:39

for a rebuilt engine and new oil pump, my car seems to be running a lot higher on oil pressure than originally

**OLDMNSX** · 05-19-2009, 11:16

I just did the conversion and here is what I found. 1 KG/cm2 = 14.21 LB/in2

So our gauge would be:
LB/in2 --- KG/cm2

113.68 --- 8
93.786 --- (6.6)
75.313 --- (5.3)
56.84 --- 4
39.946 --- (2.6)
18.47 --- (1.3)
0 --- 0

Values in () are only shown as a Dashed Line on the oil pressure gauge.

**pgilliam1** · 05-19-2009, 11:55

Originally Posted by gs963

The manuel says 10psi for idle and no less than 50 at 3000RPM. I thought the factory gauge was 10psi for each mark. It that wrong??

It's about 15PSI per mark on the guage. Our guages and sending units are pretty poor for a car of this caliber. I have cleaned my sending unit wiring connector (this is a problem area on these cars - early models had recalls) and it helped, but I still question my readings. I'm thinking about installing a manual unit - AHHH the good old days

.

**John@Microsoft** · 05-20-2009, 08:50

Originally Posted by dlynes

hey guys!
What is your normal driving condition, operating oil pressure level in your nsx?

normal as in, after car is warmed up, and just cruising around?

This is after warm-up, just kind of cruising around.

**Tom239** · 05-20-2009, 09:19

Originally Posted by OLDMNSX

So our gauge would be:
LB/in2 --- KG/cm2

113.68 --- 8
93.786 --- (6.6)
75.313 --- (5.3)
56.84 --- 4
39.946 --- (2.6)
18.47 --- (1.3)
0 --- 0

Values in () are only shown as a Dashed Line on the oil pressure gauge.

All the NSXs I've seen have pressure gauges with lines at whole numbers, not 1.3, 2.6, and so on.