> > Wade, are you sure you have the right item, or has there
> > been a retrofit of something new? Oil pres. guages have always
> > been mechanical. Before the single guage between the spedo and tach.
> > it shared the same housing with the temp guage.
>
> Bzzzt! Wade is correct- only early B's (63-67) Have a mechanical oil guage.
> The 68 and up have a oil line going to an electrical sending unit, which is
> mounted on the fire wall near the heater. The 68-71 sender is highly prone
> to failure, and are expensive. (ie: Vicky brit- 149.00 !)
>
> 72-80 used a much cheaper switch- (10.95), which may not be compatible with
> the 68-71 guage. Scott?
>
> Or, the guage for the 72-76 may fit the 68-71- I'm not sure tho.
I've got a hybrid setup in my MGB. The original 1971 setup used the
expensive electric sending unit, which mounts to the side of the block
and uses a short (8") flex hose to take pressure from the fitting at
the rear of the engine. I was experiencing unreliable readings with
this setup, so I installed a different gauge to verify whether it was
the gauge or the engine.
What I now have in the car is the setup from my 1972 parts car, which
was fully mechanical, BTW. That is, there's a flex hose leading to
a bracket on which there's a threaded connection; there's then a
bronze capillary tube that runs through the dashboard to where I've
temporarily mounted the gauge from that '72 parts car. That gauge
fits onto the other, threaded end of the same capillary tube.
What Mike O'Connor recommends is converting to the later style
electrical gauge, for which both the sender and the gauge are less
expensive. In the interim, I have two oil pressure gauges, one of
which constantly reads 0 because the sending unit it used is no longer
in the car, and the other of which reads 50-70 psi. I have to replace
the non-op gauge with the working one, right after I fix the oil leak,
clean up the exhaust system, and balance the national budget...
--Scott "Some days I think the budget would be the easy part" Fisher
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