I decided I wanted to see how well the oil psi in my 302 E-line's was so I got rid of the idiot pressure switch and replaced with a pressure sender, application ~88 Ford Truck. I had to use a 1/4" female to 1/4" male 45° brass fitting to get the bigger sender to fit. Then I simply jumped the 20Ω resistor on the back of the cluster with a piece of wire. In the video you can see the pressure build with the RPM'S.

FF





YouTube - Econoline E 150 Ford REAL oil pressure gauge

God Bless

 

Thats a great mod. I did that on our '92 explorer. (same value resistor too). That analog idiot light design is just a pain to have..

~Mark

 

Really, I'm just glad to know that I have good pressure.

 

Ok so i had to revive this thread just to ask... Does anyone have a pic of the 20 ohm resistor on the back of the cluster???? How easy is it to locate? Just wondering b/c i am going to do this conversion soon! Didn't want to get lost if there were a bunch of resistors on the cluster to choose from...

 

nstueve,

I thought that all the trucks you list already have the real type gauge.
Here is the 20 ohm resister in the 1992-1996 cluster:


/

 

Think this would work for the 2000 E350 with 7.3 ?

 

pop off the engine hatch.
remove the sender wire from the sender
turn key to ign
check your oil pressure
replace sender wire
check oil pressure
were both readings the same?
do the mod (replace sender, jumper resistor)

 

Nope... definatly not... I have seen real OP guages and when you rev the engine the needle moves... Doesn't happen on my trucks... well maybe the 83 and 86... but they aren't running yet... Actually 3 of the 5 you see will be disappearing come next summer...

I hope the back of my 88/89 clusters look the same so i can find that resistor!

 

x2... LOL! Best $20 I'll ever spend... well besides the $20 for the 130amp alt, or the $20 I'll pay for an efan... LOL... Maybe I just need to make a series of threads... "How to improve you truck $20 at a time!"

 

On "The Oven"

I just used a brass tee on the oil port on the side of my 300, one to the idiot gauge, and one to the mechanical gauge. Been workin' fine for over 10 years

 

I need to make a correction to this thread for anyone reading about how to do this swap.

It turns out after research my cluster IS a real oil pressure guage cluster. However the OP switch is not the real OP switch. I have the 7psi idiot light OP switch.

here is my cluster out of "Thumper" ignore the red circle and arrow. This cluster is from a truck already wired for REAL oil pressure (ie: no jumper wire needed!)


Here is the Oil pressure switch that was OEM (ie: 7psi idiot light) Motorcraft SW2178A


Here is what I replaced the above switch with Motorcraft SW873B (from 87 F250 4.9L)

 

In addition to the above post...

I will admit I used a different pressure switch than the 873B pictured above. However I believe the above part will have an extended shaft allowing other 4.9L owners to skip the brass extention or 45* mentioned above. Using the above part with an extended shaft may also allow 302 and 351w owners to not need the brass fitting too. I'm not 100% on this yet but as you can see the origional switch has a long shaft on it so I would assume the older 873B will have a longer shaft too. I used a different sender from the 70's and will leave that borg warner part number in a later post for those that might want it.

The other thing I will admit to is the fact that I probably used to much TFE tape which blocked the switches ability to ground itself to the block. So the switch has not been functioning properly for me, yet... I would suggest others to use very little TFE tape or use a paste instead (if you are using a brass connection). If you are not using a brass connection to make the new OP sender fit, no TFE paste or tap is needed for install (the sender will come with sealant on it). I will be working on resolving my problems and adding more pictures of dash dismantling, location of Speedo cable disconnect, etc...

I have also heard that others like Turbogus above put a "T" fitting in. This allows you to send your oil pressure to the cluster and avoid CEL's and put in a second sender that runs to a "A-Pilar" OP guage. This might be even better for reading "real" OP because an AutoMeter OP guage will actully have numbers instead of Low-Normal-High like the OEM one. New "A-pilars" that hold Autometer guages can be found at Summit, LMC, etc... http://www.lmctruck.com/icatalog/fd/full.aspx?Page=96

I hope to make this the "GO TO" thread for making a swap back to a real OP guage/switch. So others with pictures please post them so all model years are covered!

 

Thanks for the accolade nSteve, I only went that way as it seemed the most straightforward at the time.

 

I'm glad to see this thread revived. I hope more people see it and do the mod to their trucks.

I have the parts to do it to mine, and hopefully some time soon I will swap mine.

I don't know why Ford didn't make them this way to begin with.

 

Motorcraft Part# SW1547B fits the 1989 F250 351W in case anyone needs the info.

Is there a way to look under the dash to see if it already has the resistor? I think I can talk my son into going upside down in the truck but only if he will be able to see it (not going to be me this time!)

I don't really want to pull them out just to see if it's there.