Just as the title says under hard cornering my low oil pressure warning light is flashing on for just an instant. I have researched this problem but the only answer I have found suggests having a low oil level. I have checked now multiple times under different conditions and the oil level seems to be fine.

The only other clues I have is that is seems to only happen on right hand turns, but I'm not positive. It has happened 4 times now (all in the last week) and I wasn't paying attention to the direction of the turn the first time (on a extremely spirited drive on some mountain roads). Also there are no codes stored in the ECU that I can read with my scangauge.

Any ideas? Failing oil pump? Bad oil/filter? I'm stumped

 

I know some folks installed baffled oil pans on r53's to prevent/fix this issue...the oil has simple sloshed away from the pickup in the pan....

 

I've read about that. The thing is I have driven this car for almost 4 years now and hit many hard turns before. This has never happened in the past. So something has changed.

I'll concede that its possible I'm simply hitting turns harder then ever before and recently started crossing some threshold, but I'm very dubious of that explanation.

 

You're becoming a much faster driver without even knowing it

I'd guess just the slosh.. are you using a different type/viscosity oil?
Not to sound demeaning but are you reading the dipstick correctly? Its a pretty crappy dipstick and there are a good handful of people who don't read them correctly (just trying to rule everything out).
Otherwise, not sure if the HPFP would have anything to do with it, but as you probably know, thats on extended warranty now for known premature failure issues.

 

I would try and get a real pressure meter on there. If you have marginal pressure at other times, it may point to a more serious situation than sloshing oil in the pan.

Also like asked above, what kind of oil? At least I would go up to a 10/40 if you are running thinner oil.

 

believe its castrol synthetic 5w/30. ill double check later.

 

Sounds to me like a pretty common problem with "street" engines...

You probably take the turn at such a speed that the oil is forced away from the oil pickup. Nothing unusual and the solution can either be found in a baffled oil pan or you can actually go a step further and look into a dry-sump systems. However be ready to be emptying your wallet

Or a much simpler solution would be to hold back on the gas in to corner!!

 

I get the same thing usually on a right turn and only seems to happen since fitting the Bilstein PSS10's, Hotchkis sway bar and control arms and corner weighting.

Guess the car just moves to good now and the oil sloshes about a bit more perhaps uncovering a sensor on fast cornering which is why it reads low oil when you do it.

Guess this would also account for why it only happens one direction as that would be part of where the sensor is located, so if uncovered corenering oen way it is probably the opposite cornering the other way.

 

how about two other possibilities not mentioned:

1. bad/marginal pressure sensor?
2. tensioner starting to fail?

Simplest check on #1 is replace it, while presumably on #2 to look for the tensioner failing signs (including noise; I'm just speculating if it starts to fail, the oil pressure at some point will go low as/if it leaks). Yes other things suggested seem possible (other than maybe HPFP seems unrelated to oil), but OP notes much spirited cornering historically w/out any warning light.

 

Well as my cold start rattle started on Monday of this week after 41k miles of trouble free driving and precautionary change of tensioner a year ago I will hopefully know on Friday once my car has been into mini if sorting out the cold start rattle also sorts out the oil warning light on fast right cornering.