Well i dont know if this has been happening for a long time or just started but today i noticed that after 45 mins of driving the oil pressure at idle waz 15psi so i drove home immeadlety and changed the oil and fired it up went to 50 psi at idle cold so i took it for a drive and then warm the the oil pressure at idle waz 25. the oil pressure at 3000 rpms is like 60-70 around that range.. some told me to look at the front cover o ring and other have said itz just from my atkins thermal pellet.. umm i have no clue, how low can the oil pressure be before itz consittered doing damage to the engine?? please lemme know any ideas


Thanx

Dustin

 

All of my rotaties have had oil pressure ~30PSI at idle.

 

is that with a aftermarket guage or stock guage??

 

I've been told numerous times that the stock gauge is the ***** sometimes.

After removing the harness today to the gauge, I noticed that it was as dirty as hell, and I wouldn't be surprized whatsoever if the oil, grease and dirt was affecting the connection. The connection is really small, and really shitty, it has no insulation from the elements of all of this, and is pretty much exposed.

 

im geting my numbers off a aftermarket auto meter guage, mounted in a oil filter pedistal adapter

 

Mechanical gauge?

maybe the line for the mechanical gauge is shitty, if it is mechanical that is.

Just for kicks felix, install the stock one and see what it tells you. clean up the connection if its greasy too, if it even matters

 

We had a talk about this Dustin!

Haha, 20-30psi at idle is perfectly acceptable, your oil before (since you said it smelled a lot like gas) was most likely just very contaminated. If you're getting 25psi now at a 700rpm idle, you're fine! Stop worrying yourself over nothing

Also, oil pressure at idle when cold will be around 50psi, that's normal, as it gets hot it goes down. Check the FSM under troubleshooting and there is a thing it talks about for oil pressure at certain rpms, if you're really that scared about it you can check. I think it states what it needs to be at 2000 or 3000rpm and up, can't remember it's been a long time.

 

i have the stock one hooked up too, itz all cleaned up from the recient rebuild, and the autometer is a electric one... the one in the cluster reads like 5 psi more than the auto meter one

 

Yah my stock one reads about 5psi more at idle than my autometer electric one as well, but after 2-3k it reads lower than the autometer.

 

You have a new rebuild, you suffer from blow-by, which dillutes your oil with gas, it happens, your oil pressure will suffer from this, this is why scheduled oil changes are good for rebuilds.

 

I don't buy the fuel dilution (incorrectly called blowby) story. You'd have to have a hell of a lot fuel in the to thin it to a lower vicosity for it to affect oil pressure. He's running 20w-50 and the oil pressure problems he is talking about wouldn't be caused by a 20 weight oil.

 

On mechanical gauges I usually see 55-75 during cranking/startup cold, then around 25-40 warm at idle and 60-70 above 3k when warm. Anything in this area would be normal.

IF there were a problem it'd be the front cover o-ring, oilpump, or pickup tube.

 

Or OPR, or front regulator spring, or oil pump drive gear being worn, and the list goes on... What Kevin listed is the obvious/usual stuff that covers about 99% of the people, but the FSM lists these things as candidates too.