SlowTeg

Something doesn't sound right.. So cruising on the highway ~4k rpms you see 60+ but under load/vtec it drops to 40psi? You shouldn't have such a big drop under load.

Also, like others said, 250 is nothing. Heck, even short trips to 280 on occasional highway pulls wouldn't be a cause for concern.

King Tut

No they are not. No street/weekend driver needs an oil cooler. I'm telling this to you as a guy that tracks his turbo S2000 with oil temps north of 280F.

S2K-F8

Well that's good to hear! I thought 250 was getting pretty hot....I'll just keep an eye on it and not worry about it now, thanks!

Maybe I didn't explain well....when I mash the throttle and car hits the vtec crossover point, the oil pressure drops for a sec then comes back up. I assume this is normal, but my concern was that the pressure was too low

The only variable was switching from one type of oil cooler to the other

S2K-F8

Awesome...thanks for the info!

Mrsideways

You do know that oil needs to exceed 212f in order to burn off moisture that gets in it from condensation overnight. 240-250 is a nice oil temp. When you start to worry is when you start seeing it near 300f. That's shut it down time. I ran a Z06 at sebring 2 years ago with a big oil cooler and I would see 310f in 1 hard lap.

Mrsideways

I agree, you've got a flow issue. I swapped to a dry sump on my old motor and saw Oil pressure dropping in vtec to 40ish, It was only a matter of min from seeing that the motor promptly put a nice hole in the block. You've got a flow restriction of sorts if your seeing that.

S2K-F8

Any ideas on where I should start troubleshooting?

Mrsideways

Start trouleshooting at what changed, send an oil sample to blackstone to see if there is high levels of bearing material. Disconnect oil cooler at radiator and loop the lines and see if anything changes, if it doesn't then remove sandwich plate and see if anything changes. If nothing changes then it's in the motor and you've gotta wait for the oil sample to come back (take like 2 weeks) to see if they see anything. If the oil sample comes back fine and nothing changed with the cooler removed completely then I wouldn't worry. But I have a feeling doing one of those 3 things will give you an answer.

The Beauty is looping the lines just mean buying a male to male AN fitting from summit so that's easy, and the blackstone sample is like $30 so that's cheap. so your not spending a bunch of money to try this stuff.

S2K-F8

Much appreciated....my car is in hibernation until April/May so I'll have some time to try and figure things out

SakeBomb Garage

Absolutely... the Jackson Racing one has no significant internal heat exchanger.... so there's no pressure drop. No surface area means no pressure drop means no heat exchanged, and the temperature delta between hot coolant and hot oil is small, where hot oil and relatively cold air IS significant.

These heat exchanges sell well because they sound good, but they do not cool the oil in any meaningful way The oil to hot coolant heat exchangers are sadly, snake oil. Unless it's literally a oil cooler integrated within a radiator, you're not seeing a pressure drop or significant oil cooling.