Drop in Oil Pressure: Changed to Synthetic!

[rbattelle]

I have posted this before, it is not my imagination when I change my oil the presure on the gauge reads a little higher for a while... . still not convinced the sender is just a open or closed switch.

I have a spare sender.



I will run a test and show pictures and documentation to prove it to the skeptics.



-Ryan

 

[67guzzler]

I agree Bertram. I think the oil pressure gauge does more than a dummy light. Maybe not as good as a mechanical gauge but it's doing something.



I can change the oil when the truck is hot then on a restart the gauge behaves as if the oil would be on a cold start... .

 

[jsimpson]

old thread... wow. .



i now am running 0w40 xd-3 synthetic and pressures are nearly identical to when i was running 5w40. . and i am measuring off the main gallery now too...

No surprise there - they're both 40 weight oils...

 

[Mundgyver]

If you are interested, you have the ability to turn your oil pressure up on the engine. It only takes 5 minutes and a socket set.



Look at your oil filter housing and you should see a bolt head on the right side towards the front of the engine. That bolt head is a plug that holds a pressure spring on top of a simple bypass ball valve with in the supply oil line from the pump. It's purpose is to open up at about 65 psi on a 2nd gen truck (not sure on a 3rd gen) and route oil back to the crankcase should you exceed the spring pressure. Get yourself a direct reading gage and install it into the 2nd port on top of the oil filter housing unit. Start up and take a few readings when the engine is cold, warm and hot, idling and at cruise speed rpm. Make some notes on the pressures observed.



Next find yourself some very thin washers / shims. Pull the plug after shut down and insert 1 thin (I mean thin) shim or washer and put the plug back in. Start up and watch your pressure.



I use my truck as an example here. Before this mod my oil pressure at idle on a cold morning would be 65 psi with 70 psi under lite load till warm up. After warm up my pressure would drop to 20 psi at idle and 46 under load on at freeway speeds.



I wanted to increase my oil pressure because I was adding a Spinner II off the 2nd oil port to remove soot.



I installed a very thin washer to compensate for a parallel oil path flow.



My oil pressure now runs 30 psi at idle when warmed up and 62 psi at cruise speed on the highway. This allows me to run the Spinner II at 6,000 rpm to spin out the soot. In the morning my oil pressure at start up when cold will idle at 72 psi and under moderate load will level off at 85 psi.



I have been running this way for 60,000 turns now with no problem. I run only full synthetic 15W/40.



Food for thought Hope this helps you out.

 

[MMeier]

I love it when a 1 year old thread gets bumped.

Care to see a couple 2 year old threads reopened??