Your lower oil pressure during high-stress and hot conditions is a function of the oil temperature. If you had an oil temp. gauge, you would see that gauge's reading relate to your oil pressure and your warning light. I won't guess your oil temps but vehicles can see 300f oil temps at times. I'd say if you are worried about the oil pressure going low when your oil gets real hot you might think about getting an auxiliary oil cooling system. There's lots of variations on how to cool your engine or transmission oil..You could discuss it with some of your 'trusted' mechanical acquaintances and decide what might suit your needs or do some reading and research on your own.

I've found all the parts I needed at this place...You can download the PDF Porsche oil cooling guide for some ideas..And also go to the main page for more parts that are not Porsche specific.

http://www.batinc.net/porsche.htm

I don't have a WBX motor in my Vanagon, mine is an inline Jetta and it needs no additional oil cooling. The way I have done it on other cars and race cars is to install one of Mocal adapter plates between the oil filter and the mounting flange...the adapter plate gives you an outlet and inlet for your cooling system and/or oil temp gauges, remote filters, etc.

One thing to consider before you do a serious system like an auxiliary oil cooler: You will want your vehicle to almost "revert" to it's original configuration, by design, if what you add on should fail for any reason.... It's not always possible to eliminate some risk when you add complexity to a system, like with longer oil lines, etc...But you want to keep in mind, as you configure any 'improvement' that should the improvement become inoperative your vehicle won't die as a result. Right now, the way your van is working, it lives....even if it may be 'not cool' going uphill or upwind in very hot conditions...But if you 'fix' it with an oil cooler that is ill-thought out and that system should fail and result in a no-oil at all condition...you are going to kick yourself..

Think it through then go. You should be able to keep your oil temp at 180f where they like it..which should help your low oil pressure problems..

The coolant in your engine...that responds to a relatively 'active' temperature controlled system response. Your oil, on the other hand, is in smaller passages with much less volume and the standard oil coolers are tiny...When you stress out the motor for a longer period...you have what is called "Heat Soak" going on in the motor...every single part becomes quite hot..Your regular radiator and cooling system respond by opening up and kicking on the fan..Your stock oil cooling system just sits there...It behaves the same at -20f as at 120+f...depending on the normal radiator to keep the motor cool enough....We can improve on that with additional components and expense...the factory could have done that, too..but they deemed it 'un-profitable' I guess..."not necessary to sell Vanagons"...

If my oil pressure was dropping to 20psi under high load...I would certainly cool things down..That seems too low for sustained highway driving...In My Humble Opinion... But that seems kinda normal for the WBX and they work ok world wide..so it must be acceptable.. Don Hanson

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:

> just one thing Dave, the factory "oil cooler" is more of an "oil temp > moderator". Helps in warm up of engine but really can't pull oil > temps down that much as compared to a "little radiator type" oil cooler. > > alistair > > > > On 5-Aug-10, at 7:56 AM, Dave Mcneely wrote: > > So, this beast has a factory oil cooler, as we all know. Do these > sometimes go bad, perhaps having either oil or coolant channels > partially blocked? Is oil temperature (separate from coolant > temperature, which is picked up on the thermostat housing I believe) > the likely reason for these variations in oil pressure indication as > I suspect? If so, is there a fix, so that oil pressure remains at 30 > psi or so even at high ambient temperatures, and does not drop below > 5 psi (which brings the blinker on I believe) at idle? >