OIl pressure gage, trust it!

Hi Friends,
If you don"t have a oil pressure gage on your bike, buy one, becouse, this will give you a lot of informations about the healt of your engine:
Of course you can see the oil returning to the tank at idle, but what when you are riding the bike, just after rhe check, and you lost pressure like it was happening to me (nut loose on the conrod) The gage show me good pressure at low RPM and when reving-up the engine the pressure gos down, i dobbel check all the oil seals, the oil pump and so on, evrything was OK and alot of persons say "dont trust your gage"
I dont worry about the gage till the disaster!
Believe me in the future I will always trust my gage!
When I start-up the engine the pressure is 70 PSI, I know this is very high, but playing with the relief valve give me a lower pressure when cold but also when warm, no more as 35 PSI, so I get back to the setting with 70 PSI when cold, and when warm I still have 45- 50PSI
The gage give you also good indications about the temperature of the oil, mostly I have to do around 5 km at low rev before the pressure drop to 45 PSI, when I ritch 45 PSI, Iknow that the oil temp is OK and that you can push the old lady to 6.000 Rpm and more sometime....
My gage is coming from a HD accessories book, the needle is in oil, and the gaghe is very accurate
The oil line start from the timing side, same place where your rockers feed line start (I make a longer banjo bolt) and halfway i make a alloy block between the line to fit a pressure sensor tha actived a idiot warning light on the dashbord when pressure is lower as 10 PSI, this never happens on my bike, the warning light is on only when the engine is not runing (so far)
Cheers
Yves

Good idea Yves. Think I will do the same . Easy to do and well worth the trouble. Epecially if you have oil lines and filter. Every oil connection and filter seam is a potential failure point not counting insde the engine.

Yves,

I noticed you mentioned changing the shims in the pressure relief valve changed the oil pressure from 35psi to 45 psi with warm oil. In theory this should not be. The valve should only bypass pressure in excess of it's pre-set max. I'm not doubting you, just asking if this is indeed what happens. I can't say I've ever changed the number of shims in my valve. I have ~65 psi at startup. Once the oil is at operating temperature, pressure is ~10 psi per 1000 rpm.

JimC said:

Yves,

I noticed you mentioned changing the shims in the pressure relief valve changed the oil pressure from 35psi to 45 psi with warm oil. In theory this should not be. The valve should only bypass pressure in excess of it's pre-set max. I'm not doubting you, just asking if this is indeed what happens. I can't say I've ever changed the number of shims in my valve. I have ~65 psi at startup. Once the oil is at operating temperature, pressure is ~10 psi per 1000 rpm.

Click to expand...

His was happening with a brand new OEM relief valve, the pressure was to high when cold and give me 55 psi at 4.000 rpm, so I take the shim out and evrything same to be OK now, I still gat a high pressure and 40 psi at 4.000
But even now my pressure is to high when cold like yours, why the relief valve don't bypass more oil when cold, can it be the tickness of the oil??

JimC said:

Yves,

I noticed you mentioned changing the shims in the pressure relief valve changed the oil pressure from 35psi to 45 psi with warm oil. In theory this should not be. The valve should only bypass pressure in excess of it's pre-set max. I'm not doubting you, just asking if this is indeed what happens. I can't say I've ever changed the number of shims in my valve. I have ~65 psi at startup. Once the oil is at operating temperature, pressure is ~10 psi per 1000 rpm.

Click to expand...

I mean a high pressure when cold

I run with an oil pressure gauge, and when my engine starts to drop below 10psi per 1,000 rpm, I know that the engine oil is getting very hot. This only seems to happen when I am running at sustained (relatively) high speed of 70 to 85 mph such as on a motorway/ dual carriageway. By slowing down 10 mph or so, it soon recovers to +10 psi per 1,000 rpm. I suppose ignorance is bliss, and the majority of engines seem to survive, and so possibly I am being a bit over cautious, but I notice that in Lugwigs thread about oil changing, that reference is made to damaging oil by overheating it. I have considered fitting an oil cooler, but have made the decision to just slow down when the need to occurs.

Whether this is in part a reflection to the condition of the engine wear on my bike I am not sure, but at tickover on a cold startup it shows about 70psi.