Lots of lecturing, though!

puttster

 

Not true. I stated:

 

You are correct, I should have said one answer in three days.

 

It's ok, people would rather argue over stupid **** lol

 

Hey all. So I have been reading a lot about low oil pressure on FEs and have a decent knowledge about it but the following situation baffles me...

Summer 2012: Rebuilt an original 428 with all stock components. Started it up and it got hot and the oil pressure was down at 5psi and I shut it off... The intake gasket was leaking water into the oil and it was not a good situation.

Fall 2012: I pulled the motor and rebuilt it, installing a high pressure oil pump checking all the critical components and cleaning out the radiator. I took it out for a 45 minute test drive. When cold the oil pressure was ~65 psi and then when hot at idle ~15 psi. When I rev up to 3500 rpm the pressure jumps up to no more than 25 psi...

Is this safe? Any recommendations?

 

I just bought my 1966 about a month ago and was freaked out also by how low the oil pressure gets at idle when hot. I was told this was normal but it still freaks me out.

 

It has to do with the routing of the oil and where the pressure is measured. One of a very few bad things about the FE design. They run for years like that.

Take a deep breath and drive on.



John

 

Our good 'ol sending units most always read low. Get an actual pressure gauge if you want an accurate reading.

 

Good advice. What's funny about the sending units is that when they heat up, they don't read accurately anymore. Resistors tend to increase in resistance as they heat up. The higher the temp, the lower the reading on the gauge.

Which is why some have gotten this idea that headers make the oil pressure lower because of the heat. Well, yeah, but that's because the oil sender is right near the front tube of the headers

Anyway...