Oil Pressure and Temperature sandwich plate

[lsb]

A couple of questions for those of you that do a lot of trackdays and have fitted a sandwich plate between the oil filter and block :

Firstly, have you had any issues with oil leaks due to constant high revs/time ? I don't like the idea of putting a "weak" point onto the car that revs to 8000 + rpm so experiences welcome !!

Also after reading the Stack sender fitting instructions they advise to fit the sender to the chassis "remotely" on race/ high rpm engines. Did anyone do this or did you just fit the senders straight into the sandwich plate ?

I use my car a lot on track (20 days a year) and would appreciate it if anyone who puts their car through it's paces regularly on track and has fitted gauges has any advice re: using or not using a sandwich plate.

Thanks.

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Hi,

I use a sandwich plate for stack sensors and it's been fine. There is already a sandwich plate fitted by Lotus to supply oil to the front mounted oil coolers so I don't see it as adding a weakness to the engine.

However there are things to watch out for.

1) Make sure the snadwich plate matches the thread of your sensors - They will usually either be 1/8 BSP or 1/8NPT. Stack are 1/8 NPT so yo need to make sure you get a sandwich plate that fits else they will not seal properly

2) Use some form of sealant on the sensors (and blanking plugs if fitted) - either liquid gasket or teflon tape. I had a leak the first time I did this on one sensor and had to refit the sensor (no big deal). The leak was obvious even at idle so I think if it holds up there it should be fine. As an aside, the oil pressure at idle when cold is actually not far off the pressure when hot running at high speed (somewhere about 80-90 psi)

3) On the bolt that mounts through to the existing sandwich plate I would advise using some thread lock to ensure this doesn't vibrate loose or come undone when changing the filter. (dont use it on the filter thread though!)

As for the remote mounting, this is more for when you "T" an existing sensor which is quite a common approach. The pressure sensor is quite heavy and there have been cases where the extra weight of two sensors coupled with engine vibration has caused the T piece to fail. However there is no issue if you want to take a short extension pipe (I would recommend braided) and attach this to the sandwich plate and mount the sensor to the chassis. This won't affect a pressure sensor however you can't use the same trick for a temperature sensor as the unit needs to be in the flow.

If you are particualry worried about this then I would recommend fitting a remote filter plate to the existing sandwich plate. You can then mount the other end of the remote filter plate to the chassis and then fit the sandwich plate to this along with the stock filter. The added bonus is that this would also reduce the chance of the filter (now quite long with two sandwich plates) being hit by some road debris although I see the chance of this incredibly low.

[lsb]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm guessing that the oil pressure at idle with hot oil will be the same as the accusump and read around 40 psi ?

After some research it seems there are many people who do not recommend the use of a sandwich plate as well as many that do !! I'm glad yours has worked well but I cannot help but think that an easier way to just get an oil pressure reading would be to replace the oil pressure switch for the warning light with the new oil pressure sender ? I read somewhere that the warning light only comes on at 7 psi by which time it's too late.

My question regarding this is : what size fitting is the oil pressure switch on a 2 eleven ? I'm guessing that it's not 1/8 npt (same as the pressure sender) as this would be too simple !! I have looked on the internet but cannot find an answer. A definitive answer to this from someone would be most welcome :-) I can then order an adaptor and get the pressure gauge installed.

Thanks.

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I don't see what's wrong with a sandwich plate. Every exige/211/elise sc has them as does every car in the states for front oil coolers.

You can't replace the oil pressure sensor on the Toyota unit as it's also used for Vvti engagement/control. You can T it but as with the above you must mount the T remotely and I would advise steel over brass.

Being a Japanese engine the sensor will 99% be 1/8 bpt and not npt.l

Also it's not just me - at least three other members here and more than I can count on lotus talk have fitted sandwich plates without issue. It's cheap and takes only ten minutes to fit and you can do it easily without draining the oil. I did it by undoing the oil filter and catching about 100mls of oil into a funnel and bottle.

The other bonus is that most sandwich plates have a second port for fitting a temp sensor. Now some might question the accuracy of Reading the temp at the sandwich plate but that's a different argument all together

[lsb]

Again, thanks for the reply.

I didn't realise that the pressure switch controlled the v v t. Don't really fancy the t-piece solution, so a sandwich plate it is !! Ordered the blue one from elise shop and also a oil temp gauge. Hopefully it'll all do what is says on the tin :-)

It is not the isolated sandwich plate that worries me it is the idea of sandwich plate on sandwich plate. It would have been so much easier if Lotus could have fitted them as original equipment especially as it was designed for the track, but hey nothing's perfect.

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Thats the one I and others have and works well.

Agreed - for a track car not having basic oil information is frankly dissappointing.