The paper concerns numerical analysis of pressure distribution of an oil film on the valve plate in the variable height gap of an axial piston pump. The analysis employs the finite element method. For determination of oil pressure variations in the gap, the Reynolds equation, commonly applied in the theory of lubrication, is applied. The equation is solved numerically with the use of self-developed program based on the finite element method. In order to obtain high accuracy of the results, an adaptive mesh refinement based on residual estimations of solution errors is applied. The calculation results are represented as dependent on the geometric and working parameters of the pump.