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L77 AFM oil pump, delete sump pan relief valve, potential oil pressure?

jacks355

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I'm halfway through a cam swap and DOD delete in my 2012 SS L77. I'm planning on putting the standard oil pump back in and shimming the pumps relief valve, and I've already deleted the relief valve in the oil pan. From what I've read this setup retains good oil pressure and prevents issues down the track, but then others say to replace the L77 pump with a stock unit such as the L98... but why?

If you've run this setup please share your experiences. If you shimmed the oil pump relief spring how thick should the shim be and what oil pressure is expected?

Pics of the plug (m14, 1.5 x 12mm long) replacing the valve.

l77-oil-a - Copy.jpg
l77-oil-b - Copy.jpg
l77-oil-c - Copy.jpg
 

Redline457

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Hi Jacks, I’d stick with the L77 pump, I believe they are a high volume pump due the AFM stuff, the L98 didn’t have AFM so maybe used a different pump. I’ve done 2 cam upgrades on an L76 VE and my current L77 both with AFM delete , L77 idles with 3.5 bar (50 psi ) hot oil pressure. Not bad I reckon. Can’t comment on the pump shimming. Good luck.
 

jacks355

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Hi Jacks, I’d stick with the L77 pump, I believe they are a high volume pump due the AFM stuff, the L98 didn’t have AFM so maybe used a different pump. I’ve done 2 cam upgrades on an L76 VE and my current L77 both with AFM delete , L77 idles with 3.5 bar (50 psi ) hot oil pressure. Not bad I reckon. Can’t comment on the pump shimming. Good luck.

Thanks Redline, that's excellent oil pressure at idle and there's so much confusing information online making it hard to know which setup is best. Your example confirmed my decision to stick with the std L77 pump.
Now that I'm ready to start my newly cammed L77 with DOD delete in the car I want to ensure there's oil pressure at intial startup. I'm concerned on relying on the dashboard warning light alone and I want to buy an oil pressure guage to mount internally. Looks like I'll also need a tee piece to tap into the oil sender unit at the rear of the inlet manifold but its going to be tricky to reach in the short term. What setup do you run to monitor your oil pressure and do you know of any easier alternatives such as ebay bluetooth scantool with oil pressure reading?
 

Redline457

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Hi Jacks, I don’t use anything special only the oil pressure readout from the performance menu, probably not the most accurate buts gives you good indication and starting reference point to monitor .
Did you start up your L77 ?
 

Redline457

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Hi Jacks, my 2010 VE SSV had an oil pressure display above centre AC vents along with oil temp and volts. Doesn’t your have that ? The performance menu needs to be enabled in a VF . You can do a search on here , been a couple of threads on it. Maybe put up a thread on the VE section to see what’s available. Nice looking ride you’ve got there. Did you install the WP cam upgrade?
 

Tonner Matt

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Lifters are chattery, I'm told the Johnson lifers are until they're run in a little.


Which Johnson lifters did you use ? Johnson Hy-Lift or the USA manufactured Johnson Lifters
From the research that I've done, the USA manufactured Johnson lifters are supposed to be the ducks guts, so much so that GM Performance used them in the COPO Camaro engines over the factory LS7 lifter

Just curious as I've already bought a brand new set of Morel 5290's, but now I'm considering selling them off and buying a set of Johnson 2110's and new buckets, or just buying the 2116LSR Tie Bar's for when I finally get around to doing my heads & cam swap
 
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jacks355

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Hi Redline, my VE is a 2012 SSV series II. Wow, Holden must've deleted the oil pressure/temp and volts, all I have is engine temp and fuel level in the dash and apparently an oil level warning display from the instrumentation panel in front of the driver. Only thing is I've never seen it illuminate once, not even when running a system check or the ignition is on so I assume my oil level and pressure has been ok and therefore it never comes on, not very informative really. It's pretty lame if Holden removed those vital guages in a newer model, I guess they did that to fit in the reasonbably useless touchscreen for the stereo and nav system, see photo. I've also searched all the functions on the touchscreen display and can't find any engine monitoring frunctions. I was litterally crapping myself when I started it the other day without a proper oil pressure guage but I've done quite a few engine builds over the years and relied on the dash light and hearing for signs of no oil pressure. I basically started the engine ran it for 30 seconds then shut it down, removed the rocker covers and checked there was oil, and there was plenty, so for me that was enough to know I had oil pressure to run the engine. To read my oil pressure I orderd one of these yesterday https://malexmotorsports.com/produc...1-ls2-ls3-l98-l76?_pos=4&_sid=7f060dceb&_ss=r and an oil pressure guage which I'll have to mount somewhere when I get it.

My car has Walkinshaw badges on it as the original owner bought a Walkinshaw upgrade kit from Holden when the car was originally purcahsed. The factory Walkinshaw upgrade from Holden included pod air filter intake, dual 3" catback exhaust and 1-3/4" extractors, Walkinshaw tune, interior and exterior badges. I believe Walkinshaw tune out the AFM system so it has never been actived in the car from new and I wanted it out. My mate has a 2013 VF with L77, his motor scattered needle bearings from his rocker trunnions through the engine and he had to do a full rebuild, this is when I decided to pull my engine down and remove the pesky parts.

I bought a cam upgrade/dod delete kit from Tuff Car Parts online with a VCM11 cam. The kit included 'GM spec replacement lifters' as when I bought the kit genuine GM ones were out of stock from their suppliers. When the parts arrived in a box I was in the process of choosing a tuner so I took my parts out to Oztrack to talk about tuning and to get some insight on my parts before the pulldown. The Oztrack mechanic Johnno was knowledgable and really helpfull, gave me some good pointers on the build process and what he thought were the best trunnion replacements kits, I ended up getting a CHE trunnion kit. He also said my lifters were Johnson which are a suitable LS replacements when GM have no stock of genuine ones. So the packaging was GM but the lifters in the boxes were actually Johnson without the Johnson branding. I called Tuffcarparts to confirm what my lifters were this morning and they said its possible my lifters are Johnson but they can't tell from the packaging cause it comes from GM and unfortunately I can't give you the part numbers because they're packaged by GM as GM replacements. Tuffcarparts said if my lifters are Johnson they use the HyLift Johnson, I looked them up online and there are so many HyLift Johnson's that it's hard to know. Unfortunaly I didn't take any photo's of my lifters so now I don't know for sure what type of Johnsons they actually are. Mine aren't tie bars which I considered but as I researched decided I didn't need them with a mild cam like mine, also the price of my upgrade list kept growing. I've read they're awesome with big rev/hp applications and would definately consider them if I go for a bigger cam in future. Now I really want to know exactly what my lifters are because I've done my preloads assuming the lifters have roughly 200" piston travel. I'm now on a mission to find out what they are, I'll let you know if/when I find out.

Out of interest what car/engine do you have and what are your plans for it?

ve-dash.jpg
 

Redline457

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Hi Jacks, my daily driver is 2015 SSV Redline, L77 auto, I had the W457 supercharger kit fitted and suspension lowered pre delivery, roughly 2 years after that I had the W407 cam fitted and full DOD delete done and tuned to suite, puts a smile on my face when ever I start it and drive it. Nothing to outrageous just right for a daily. I have a set of Koni FSD shocks ready to go in the near future.I also have a 2016 series 2 SSV Redline manual in storage, It gets a start and run every couple of months, got a huge 4K kms on it.
 

jacks355

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Sounds like a dream, wow 4k on it. Don't sell it! Was going to do a supercharger but had limited funds hopefully in the future though.

By the way thanks for all your help on this forum, i was surprised how many people wouldn't and couldn't be bothered talking to me, even if i was going to hand over my credit card. These forums are the only way to go for first hand experience, and cheers to guys like yourself we can learn and share our lessons learnt. I'm going to put together a write up of my whole experience with pics of the build once i have it tuned. Next step is to find a club to join.
 
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