Oil pressure drop, but oil level fine...

[Gerard <gerard@poboxes.com>]

Hi!

Some of you might know that I recently changed over to synthetic oil,
I'm now using 5W40. Yesterday it was about 35 celcius here, also
humid and I headed off to do some shopping after work. I then noticed
my oil pressure gauge drop to around 1 bar at idle. It has been doing
this since yesterday. I also just had the sump gasket and turbo oil
feed line replaced. Now I see something is leaking oil again, not
a massive leak, but still a leak. However, this morning there were
no oil drops under the car. Pressure is at 4 bar at startup, but once
it heats up to about 90 celcius on the dial (or just below that) then
the oil pressure will drop below 1.8 bar and as low as 1.0 bar. The
vehicles manual (this is a 200T, 1990 model) says to stop the
car immediately if the pressure drops to below 1.8 bar. Odd thing is
that it seems that new synthetic oil is living up to its name 'cos
the car definitely has more power and drivability compared to what it
was before the oil change.

But even though more drivable and smoother on the power now I am very
worried about this low pressure reading. I have checked the oil level
and it is perfect. The oil loss at the sump or wherever is negligable.
Does anyone  have ideas of where I need to look and what to check on
this 200T to narrow down where the problem might be? I'm already
starting to think that something gave somewhere or the pump is loosing
pressure somehow. Could it just be the viscocity of the oil?

G.
-- 
"a thousand miles from here, there is another person smiling"
name   : gerard van vught
tel    : +27-57-912 2658 (w) / 082 923 9609 (cell)
url    : http://www.acenet.co.za/homepages/gerard/
e-mail : gerard@poboxes.com  / han.solo@galaxycorp.com
         gerard@acenet.co.za / van_vught@frg.issi.co.za