I just rebuilt the motor in my 95 with stock bearing clearances and a bunch of fancy parts, one of which is a BE oil pump. I got it from flyin miata, specifically their stage 2 variant, which has the VVT gearset and 2 shims which should put me at 72psi. I'm building this car as a dedicated track car, so it will have a lot of abuse thrown at it, but still sticking the stock rev limit. I want to install a turbocharger and an oil cooler in the nearish future, but i'm not sure if 2 shims will make enough pressure to support that, especially since I kept the oil squirters. I will be running rotella t6 5w-40 if that matters. From the video Fab9 made, they say that I should need 3 shims in order to run them, but after doing some research to confirm, i've found people saying that 1 shim is ok, or even that the factory pump is fine. Will the 2 shims already in their be enough to support an oil cooler and a turbo for car that will be on track duty, or should I go back in and put a 3rd shim in, or ditch the turbo plans and just run the cooler?

 

I use the same pump on my turbo charged (EFR w/ external pressure reducer) VVT with an oil cooler and no issues. Use -10 or larger hoses for the oil cooler to reduce pressure loss in the system.

 

I run the same pump and shim count. Have an efr 6258 and a Setrab series 6, 19 row cooler. -10 likes for the cooler, and a -10 for the turbo oil return. No problem at all after 3 years and 5-9 track days each year. And thousands of road miles.

Hot idle is right around 27-30psi. Any sort of high rpm and it’s right up to 60+

 

Just make sure to log oil pressure, any dips below 20psi are a red flag, try extra oil, .5qt at a time to see if it fixes it without puking it all into your catch cans.

 

I tracked my turbo car with a 2560r and an oil cooler on a stock, unopened long block with the original oil pump for years. That engine currently has 60psi of compression in cyl 3 and will get rebuilt, but I doubt the oil pump caused that issue, but I could be wrong. Just my experience, I think you will be just fine with your setup.

 

Do you mind me asking how you have your oil cooler setup and what temps it sees? I live in Phoenix arizona so it get hot as hell, and I'm trying to figure exactly how big of an oil cooler i'll need to keep temps down.

 

Look at what I did toward the end in my build thread with the oil cooler and see if it would suit you. The thread is called Slow Torture.

 

It’s just a mishimoto sandwich plate, ~185 degree thermostat, -10 lines routed around the sway bar and back in front of the radiator. The oil cooler is v mounted off of a bumper bar with ducting that’s about 1/3 of the area of the coolers face at the opening, dipping down into the front opening. I do need to improve the ducting off of the rear still, haven’t had to yet though.

On the highway at 90-95 ambient it will hit about 205. On the track at around 90 ambient it has hit 250 during a 20 minute session. Only 12ps that day , because the heat and open loop that I didn’t bother to correct. So still plenty more of room with good oil.

 

You’re misunderstanding the oil pump shims. They do not “set” your oil pressure or increase operating pressure. They represent the pressure needed to open the oil pump bypass, which usually mostly happens on cold starts.

Unless you’re running excessively thick oil or running way tight clearances you’re unlikely to see 72+ psi during running conditions, hence the bypass will remain closed and oil pressure will be what it is. The bypass exists to prevent your poor little oil pump from having to push 100+psi through a cold motor.

 

^What he said.

It creates a shitload of wear on the pump and crank nose for zero benefit at operating temp. The bypass exists to protect the pump when the oil is cold and thick.

 

All that said; you should be fine to run a turbo and an oil cooler and not suffer from lack of oil pressure. Make sure to size your cooler plumbing appropriately (minimum-10AN) to prevent pressure drop and you should be fine. The VVT cam phaser uses a lot of oil, which is why Mazda upped the volume of the VVT pumps. Running a VVT pump on a non Vvt motor you will have plenty of volume to maintain sufficient pressure across the engine even with the extra bits in the system.

As for the shims, that’s kinda up to you. I don’t feel there’s really much need to go beyond the factory spec, even a frigid motor will be fine to start up on ~50psi with modern oils, and not be nearly as hard on the pump. If it is going to be a dedicated track car with no cat, running a high zinc/high ZDDP oil will also help. Not cheap but much more betterer than the rotella for metal on metal contact surfaces.

Regardless of how many shims you want to run I’d strongly recommend disassembling the bypass valve and making sure that the plunger moves freely in the bore, and lightly sanding it until it can move smoothly if not. I’ve seen issues where they cannot slide freely and get jammed open causing a low pressure issue.