Oh ok. You have to understand that I know nothing until I have done it once, and on the other hand I pretty much assume you know all. You could tell me the sky is green, and I'll go get my eyes checked because it looks blue to me rather than assume it actually is blue.

 

something to consider but check the oil pickup screen for blockage, I have seen a few toyota 3.0 motors that love sludge buildup and tend to have loose debris fall to the pan and get sucked right up. I have experienced this myself and just drop the pan and clean it.

 

That's actually what I was thinking would be the only possible mechanical issue but the engine has <40k miles and I do oil changes every 3k. This is marlinspike btw

 

lies.

i would like to think its the cluster acting up aswell, as the miata one does it all the time and is a common problem. but then again we are talking about race cars/poorpeoplewhothingtheyhaveclass cars

 

Well don't assume it's a mechanical issue until you know for sure that the pressure sensor and gauge are actually working all the time. No use losing sleep over an engine problem until you can prove there is one.

 

Yeah, I'm thinking sender right now, but now I have a plan of attack - an MB dealer tech told me next time it goes low I should smack the cluster and if the cluster is the problem it will start working again. If not, I'll swap the sender and see what happens.

If those two don't do it, it's time to drop the lower pan, which can be done fairly easily on this car, without even having to raise it (it's just a ridiculous number of 5mm allen head screws, I think there are ~30 of them) and look at the mesh screen. That said, the pickup has so much surface area I doubt that's the problem. Also, when it was saying low pressure I did take off the oil fill cap in the valve cover and observed what appeared to be normal flow from the camshaft oilers.

 

You know, I just thought of something...those bits in the oil filter...they weren't bits of glue...they were bits of timing chain rail...I think...I'm going to have to go dumpster digging tomorrow morning. That would explain the issue (bits of timing chain rail that sink to the bottom of the pan when you shut it off).

 

Whhhaaaaa??? Did you have a timing chain rail failure before this or is your current one just chewing itself to little bits...?

 

I'm thinking the latter. It's not unheard of on these cars. Heck, it's not even unheard of for them to run fine with a chain guide totally gone. Could it be that a couple pieces about the diameter of a T10 torx socket would have made it back to the filter, or would the mesh on the pickup have stopped that? It's hard to tell if that was glue or plastic rail as both would be hard and yelllow-ish.

 

The last post in this thread got me thinking about it:
http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w126...-pressure.html

Though, I can't explain why it would take a couple hours of driving in his instance and not in mine.

Then again, if it were missing a rail, I prob would have found out at some point pounding full throttle after I picked it up from the shop, or no?