• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Question

Share this page

jlaird

jlaird

Great Pumpkin
Country flag
Offline
My oil pressure needle sticks/twitdhes. Just started doing this.

I would expect it needs a bit of lube on the needle bearing.

How do I get the needles off to remove the face of the guage and get to the bearing?
 
jlaird said:
My oil pressure needle sticks/twitdhes. Just started doing this.

I would expect it needs a bit of lube on the needle bearing.

How do I get the needles off to remove the face of the guage and get to the bearing?
Click to expand...
Jack, use a flat bladed screwdriver that is fairly long and pry them off using the outside of the gauge to lever on so you don't mess up the face. They all just wedge on. Then take the screws out of the face. Then you can remove the oil movement all together if need be by removing some screws. or put a drop of oil on it. Might as well put one on the temp at the same time. Just be easy with it.
 
Thanks Kim. I actually have an old nasty one to test with.
 
If you test with the old one then you will be able to see once you take the face off that how the movments work. If you had a good light and one of those 3in1 oil things with the little spout on it, you could probably do it without any farther teardown.
 
Okies. Hope that is the case.
 
Jack

you only need to bend them a little bit and then twist.

Pat
 
Got both apart and needles off, peice of cake. Small screw driver from each side and they came right off.

Now will put the Bugeye face on the MK II guage and back in it goes. Never removed the guage from the dash. Just loosend it up and I got enough clearance, Oh yea, oiled the inards as well as cleaning the new face and glass and the blue light defuiser.

Not long before I can take a test drive. Hehe.
 
For future reference... I've seen dinner forks used successfully. A tine on each side, obviously... prevents inadvertently slipping & bending the needle.
 
Took a test drive.

Did not solve the prob, just may have to change the works for the oil pressure guage.

One more thing to test.
 
Jack you will have to remove the oil tube fitting from the back to get the oil pressure works out. Once the tubin nut is off and you get the needles and face back off. There are two brass screws that hold the bourbon tube and needle workings in place and then you can remove it as a unit. I tested mine with air pressure and the calibration was within 3 psi. The needle will still jump up a bit when I rev it and then jump back down when at idle. I guess that is just part of the nature of it.
 
Guage has been fully tested with air. Works just fine at all pressures and even looks like a Bugeye one. One less thing that is not quite right to my eye.

Only thing I can think now is that this started when I cut down the oil pressure releaf spring.

Guess I will need to look there. Maybe it really is studdering as the spring allows the ball bearing to jump of and on the seat. ie I cut too much maybe.

Thinking...............
 
Well, at least you know that it is accurate. I wonder about the nature of that oil pump and the relief myself. Perhaps someone more knowledgable knows the reason for this. What is the range of yours Jack? Mine seems to run between 40 and 80 when cold and then down near 20 at an idle when warm.
 
Thats what mine was running before I cut a turn of of it but it was pushing a lot of oil through the rear scroll seal. Is now 55 and 22 when it is not jumping around. In fact some times the pressure goes up when the RPM goes down. Mostly stays above 4o all the time.
 
Here is what I did and what I have now.

Installed an adjustable oil pressure cap thingee I had. Am useing a ball bearing as the pressure seal in the block as Hap recommended.

Neddle no longer jumps around, however.

I have almost 60 lbs at cold and about 40 at idle cold.

At normal running temp I have about 50 lbs and 20 idle, however. When I speed up, when the pressure is at 50 lbs, the pressure goes down a bit to about 40 then stabalizes.

Strange. I think another turn on the pressure adjustment is in order maybe. Seems that this is a very critical adjustment maybe, oh I can crank it up to what ever. First test was 100 lbs cold for only a sec or so.

What you guys think? At least it is not jumping all over the place now.
 
Took one last turn, within spec all RPM ranges cold and hot.
No twitching of the needle. The drop off of pressure is when the overpressure valve kicks in, Duh. Kicks in about 50 lbs hot, then drops to about 40 lbs. 20 at idle.

Happy camper here.
 
Back
Top