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| Joined: | 11-26-2005 |
| Location: | Flowery Branch, Georgia USA |
| Posts: | 12 |
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Judson mentioned wear on the oil pump rotor. Excessive end float can cause that problem. The way to check this is to remove or loosen the timing belt and pull the ignition sprocket front to back to check end play and measure with some dial indicator calipers. The gap on this end is exactly the same gap as the rotor to housing gap inside. If it's not too bad, you can shim the housing with a special, thinner plastic Lotus gasket (there used to be 4-5 sizes available). The manual calls for the end float to be 0.0015 inch plus or minus 0.0005 inch which I have always found wildly optimistic. You can also measure this directly at the rotor with Plastigauge. Plastigauge has the advantage of measuring any uneven wear across the rotor as well. BTW, use only the correct plastic Lotus gasket here- the wrong one (if you make your own for example) can ruin your engine if the pump becomes seized. It's happened and it's not pretty. Service Bulletin 73-26 covers some of this I think.
http://www.plastigaugeusa.com/
Thank You for your help. I will see what happens.