oil pressure

Hear is a thought
What about a vacume gauge?? My vacume gauge reads vacume and psi up to 15 psi.

I had a oil presure gauge once.It read up to 15 psi i think.When i started it would run high preasure then drop as it warmed up,just like steel says.The problem was ,if i ran hard before it warmed up it would brake the guage (it would spin the needle around too far and not come back).i went through 2 of them and gave up.
i had my oil pump apart over the winter to measure the clearances .Make sure u have tite clearances and u should be fine.the gasket under the lid was .006" thick.The new gasket i bought was .003" thick.u can go very thin here but if u remove it all together the gears will bind.This will increase oil preasure.Hope this is of some help.

Snakebyte wrote:

Hear is a thought
What about a vacume gauge?? My vacume gauge reads vacume and psi up to 15 psi.

That vacuum/pressure gauge is for air, and not fluids. I am not thinking it will work for your application.

For our bikes, an oil temperature gauge would be more important than an oil pressure gauge. Start the bike, and let it warm up before riding away. Once warmed up see what the operating temperature is. Oil can run in the area of 200-260+ F without doing any damage. If it's running too hot, then maybe an oil cooler is in the works. If it's that hot in the pan, it's always hotter in the head. An ideal routing for the oil cooler is through a thermostat before the cooler, as this will not open till the oil reaches a certain temperature. The return oil from the cooler should go into the head to cool first, but the factory oil flow looks like this without the oil cooler on a 550 Motor:

tinyurl.com/29nbo5



Oil temperature can tell you when to ease off in hot weather, or let it warm up in colder weather. If running an oil cooler, oil that doesn't warm up is not a good thing either. At least 180+ F should be a good operating temperature, depending on where you're getting your readings from.

Off soapbox now. :whistle:

Thanks for all the input. I think I am now going to go with a oil temp gauge. Maybe from z1 enterprises? Any one know of some good brands and prices?