I think it's fixed anyway. Last night I finally went after the oil
pressure relief valve. It turns out I could get to it without pulling
the exhaust manifold, so I avoided that headache. Anyway, as I unscrewed
the cover and it popped out with the spring. Now the fun part, how to
get the little bullet shaped thing out. I finally got it by sticking
a long screw in the hole and putting a magnet from an old speaker on
the back of the screw. Bingo! It slid right out.
As I cleaned the whole thing I noticed there was a nut inside the bullet,
acting as a spacer. It looked something like this:
--
|---
| | ________
| | /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /|||\
| |/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ |||/
| | --------
|--- ^ ^ ^
-- | | |
Spring Bullet Nut
I checked in my catalogs that have exploded diagrams of the parts and it
didn't look to me like that nut belonged there, so I took it out. I
cleaned of all the parts and reinstalled the whole thing and started 'er
up. Now I have a nice solid 50-75 psi, even revving the engine hard I could
only get it to about 80 psi (it's tough to tell exactly what the pressure
is as there are only four marks on the gauge, but it isn't pegged anymore:-)
So, now my question is why is that nut there? Was I right that it doesn't
belong there? The only thing that makes sense to me is that a former
owner "fixed" a low oil pressure problem by doing this, then rebuilt the
engine but didn't take the nut out of the the relief valve. One thing that
still doesn't make sense to me is why would this oil pressure problem
appear now, not when I first got the car (or at least the first time
I used Castrol 20W-50)? Actually, the car may have always had slightly
high pressure while cold, but it definetly got worse recently. As I
said before, I first noticed the problem right after installing the
oil cooler. I am a little worried that there was some crud in the cooler
that is now in the engine clogging something.
Oh well, for now I guess it's to the drive it hard 'til it breaks mode :-)
Thanks for all your help. I think RG wins the prize for being the first
to tell me to check the oil pressure relief valve.
Thanks again,
Bob
P.s. to sfisher - I'll be watching my mailbox for that six-pack :-)
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