I don't have an oil pressure warning light - I have a snapped
off sending unit with a snapped off extractor plugging it. Instead,
I have an oil pressure gauge plumbed into one of the galley plugs.
This means that I no longer have blissful ignorance; instead I can
watch and worry about low oil pressure.
I have 75 lbs cold. Warm is from 10 lbs at idle up to 40 lbs at 3500
rpms. However if I drive for about 15 minutes at 60mph, the oil
pressure drops to 25 lbs at 3500 rpms and close enough to zero at
idle.
I am running 20W50 (the problem was worse when I had the 10W30 in
for the winter). Here are my questions:
Would straight 50W be any better? (I tend to think not). How
about Motor Honey or some sort of similar stuff?
How bad is this? Part of me figures that a worn engine is going
to have low oil pressure and as long as I'm getting some pressure, there's
no point worrying about it until I'm ready to do a rebuild
anyway. (What does pressure signify anyway? Aren't most of the
engine internals lubricated by splash?)
Right now I have little time or money to spend on this problem, but
are there any fixes I should consider? I was going to clean the
pick up screen on the oil pump, is there any way to test oil pump
performance? Is replacing the main and rod bearings likely to
have any permanent effect?
BTW, this is a 1500 engine with about 100,000 miles on it. It is
currently burning no oil, and runs well, however I have not done a
compression test.
As usual, thanks in advance for your sagacity!
Greg Rowe
_________________________________________________________________
///
/// spitfires@autox.team.net mailing list
/// To unsubscribe send a plain text message to majordomo@autox.team.net
/// with nothing in it but
///
/// unsubscribe spitfires
///
///
|