Oil Pressure acting Strange

[chuntag95]

Driving home last night, I noticed my oil pressure was below 30psi (~22-23psi). That's in gear, at idle. I also seemed to be down on pressure at speed. I started thinking I have fuel in the oil. Oh boy. I checked the level and it didn't look way high or anything. I pulled a fuel sample and sent it off this morning for analysis. I was planning on an oil change tomorrow anyway. Here's the kicker. This morning, everything was back to normal.

The details of the truck are this. It is an 02 with 37200 miles and 1480 hours. I run Delvac 1 with an Amsoil remote bypass. I saw a pressure drop when I put the bypass on and a little more drop when I went to the Delvac 1. I run around 30 psi when hot at idle and last night I saw what looked like 22-23 psi.

So now for all the questions.

1. What's the best way to tell (other than the analysis I'm waiting on) if you have fuel in the oil?

2. Are the any instances of oil pressure gauges or sending units going bad?

3. Should I take off my remote bypass and see if the pressure comes back up?

4. What's the minimum pressure before I should shut it down and have it towed in?

Thanks,

Chris

[More Power]

One method others have used to determine if fuel has found its way into the oil is to put a drop or two onto a clean white paper towel.

Due to being thinner, capillary action will cause the fuel to wick farther out than the oil, and there will be two concentric soak rings - one a little darker than the other.

Smell is another indicator. Also, when the crankcase gets a few quarts overfull, the crankcase breather pipe begins to spew oily fuel underneath the vehicle.

Haven't heard of a problem with oil pressure sending units. Most of the engine sensors are read by the class-2 serial data bus, then interpreted by the ECM. A scan tool could be used to verify the accuracy of the dash gauge, as compared to what is being read by the ECM.

MP

[DmaxMaverick]

That'd scare me, too.

Your sig. lists a "pred". If it's for "Predator", then plug it in and go to "real time data" under diagnostics. The oil pressure is one of the parameters monitored. It's metric, so you'll have to do a little math. Troubleshooting from there should be pretty straight forward.

Good luck.

[chuntag95]

Thanks for the tip on the Pred oil pressure. I have never seen it before, so I'll take a look. I changed the oil on Friday, along with the trans fluid, greased the zerks, blah, blah, blah. The oil pressure has been find ever since. :confused: My only problem was accidently backing over the 2 gallons of old tranny fluid when I came down off the ramps. A bag of speedy dry and a bag of clay cat litter was still a little shy of what I really needed to clean it up. Talk about feeling dumb. redface.gif I was really hot at myself because I was trying to hurry to meet the wife for lunch. :mad: What's the saying, if you don't have time to do it right the first time......

[JrTuner]

I had the same thing happen to me recently. I changed the oil back in Nov. I have an Amsoil dual bypass and run the 5w-30 HDD oil. My oil pressure was always about 30-35 psi at hot idle in gear. From what I can recall this started after I changed the oil, it is now about 25 psi. I checked the accuracy of the gauge with a test gauge at the sample port on the filter head and it agreed with the dash gauge. I took an oil sample and it came back fine. No fuel and 45 ppm of copper. I changed both the full flow filter and the bypass filter and maybe got 1-2 psi back. I am wondering is something is happening with the dual filter head. I guess the only way to find out is to eliminate it and use a stock filter to see.

[Lenl]

This got me thinking, since I have recently swapped my 94 6.5 TD for a 2001 DMax I have noticed my oil pressure sits at about 60 psi at hiway speeds ---- what is normal?

[Murray the Cop]

I am running the same pressures, just under 30 at idle and just under 60 at hwy speed. I noticed this after the bypass install and switch to synthetic oil. Are these numbers call for concern? I also noticed a 20 degree jump in oil temp. I attributed all to the switch to full synthetic.