Thread: oil pressure needle irractic

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When you get the gauge disconnected, fire the engine up and bleed the line into a can, and get all the bubbles out. Air can make a gauge do some weird things.

If your gauge is fine, then this oil pressure pulsing could be the symptoms of a multitude of possible reasons, including but not limited to: bent distributor shaft, improperly installed distributor, non-concentric distributor gear (unlikely), bent oil pump shaft, debris blocking the closure of the oil pump's internal bypass port (piston stuck), cracked pickup tube, partially blocked pickup tube, etc.

But, I suggest changing your oil filter. Have you run the engine since cutting the first filter apart? I've seen this before where the anti-drainback flapper in an oil filter was causing the exact same symptoms (anti drainback flapper was damaged during manufacture), and I'll bet that installing a new oil filter will eliminate the problem.

Paul

P.S: If you have an orange Fram filter, remove it and replacie it with a better filter, perhaps a FoMoCo FL1A, available at Wal-Mart for cheap. I suggest that you do this even if the newly installed orange Fram filter has eleminated the oil pressure fluctuation.