Oil pressure?

["Graydon D. Stuckey" <graydon@apollo.kettering.edu>]

Folks,

	When I reinstalled the head on my 5KCSTQ a while back, I filled 
it with 50wt oil (the engine, not the head...  well actually I put the 
oil in the head... Alright, I can hear you laughing), thinking that the 
heavier oil in the summer would be OK.   You can stop laughing any time now...

	Well my (the car's actually) Autocheck didn't like it at all, and
has been telling me so for quite some time now.  It tells me there is low
oil pressure occasionally.  Since there are so many faulty systems on
these cars, I have long forgotten which ones I must heed and which ones I
can ignore. 

	So, today I installed an oil pressure sensor in place of one of 
the oil pressure switches, adn installed the gauge in the bottom half of 
the left-centre AC outlet.  My HVAC noise engineer hat is screaming at me 
for placing that terrible restriction in the AC outlet, but right now I 
want to know that my oil pressure is OK, more than I need the cold air.  
I'm out of freon anyway (propane anyone?) and the crazy HVAC system has a 
vacuum leak which raises my idle.

	Boy, this is getting long.  Oh well.

	So, I got it all back together and drove it.   Yikes! 20psi after 
it warms up.	Actually, I'm not too worried because I am confident it 
is still fairly well lubricated despite the lower-than-spec oil 
pressure.  So, I changed the oil to Valvoline 30wt "Racing" oil, and a 
new Mobil 1 oil filter which cost 4X as much as the one beside it at 
Autozone.  "It has double filtration you know!"

	Well, that's better.  The oil pressure responds like a rotary now
(you can almost measure rpm by the oil pressure gauge on a rotary!).  The
oil pressure zips up to almost 80 psi when cold, and settles in at 40 - 60
when warm.  You can see the regulator doing its thing, and the drop back 
to 40 - 60psi is a good indicator that the oil is up to operating 
temperature.

	On another topic, I had to get across a divided highway the other 
day with fairly heavy cross traffic, so I nailed it at about 6000 rpm.  It 
was a little bit wet, and the front wheels spun all the way across the 
intersection.  I hate that.  The rest of the time, it acts like a rwd car 
or an awd car, but when the fronts break loose, it looks like one of them 
wimpybutt furren fwd cars.  I want a Torsen... or one of these 
oilpump-operated LSDs.   They sound like a very good idea.  Open on decel 
which reduces the understeer tendency, and locked when the wheels spin 
differentially with very smooth transitions

Ok, I'm going to bed.

Later, 
Graydon D. Stuckey

"There's alot more to Jazz than just wrong notes"