[TR] Oil pressure in my TR6

Joe DeMuth jdemuth at ties2.net
Thu May 23 16:35:34 MDT 2013


Help. Just bought a '73 TR6 after selling the TR3 I owned for thirty years.
Everything looked good about this car, but I soon became concerned with the
oil pressure reading. At idle, running 20-50 oil, all heated up, the pressure
dropped to what looked like about 10 lbs or less on the gauge. At highway
speed it read about 40. I dropped the pan and used Plastigauge to check
clearance in the mains. I checked the back three and all where in the 2
thousandth range, which I assume is good, can't find a spec for that. All
bearings had oil. I didn't do the front one because I didn't have a new timing
chain gasket, but assumed three are good the other is probably OK. I checked
one rod bearing and it was well within spec. The rocker train appears to be
lubed its full lenght. Pulled the oil pump and found it to be just over the
high end of the various specs. Put in a new one, checking clearances before
installation. Pulled the oil relief valve and found that the previous owner
had replaced the standard spring with the slightly longer one sold by Moss.

I put it all back together. Now I have about 6o lbs at highway speed, but only
about 12 at idle. I checked the gauge by hooking up an after market gauge in
the oil pressure warning sender hole. The gauges read about the same across
the whole range of rpm

So, can I get by with this? Do I need to look further, if so, where?


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