Can you chaps give me some advise please?

I have a rebuilt Pinto 2 litre Lump, Piper 285 Cam, Unleaded Head, Twin Weber 45 DOCE Carbs.

The problem is that the oil pressure light won’t go out as it should.
I haven’t used the car much an only just covered 400 miles.
At first there was no problem, and then the light only went out at 1400 RPM when cold.
I started it today and the dam thing did not go out till warm and at 4000RPM

All ideas welcomed

1st thing too do is get a gauge in and check pressure, may be a faulty sender, maybe be a pressure problem, till you test the pressure you wont know.

Is it a blip up to 1400 revs to get it to go out, or do you have to hold it there to keep the light out?

Because ideling with the Twin 40's on ours the Alternator light never goes out,
until you blip the throttle to take ot over 1000 revs, then it stays off.

the fact it dont go out till its warm makes it sound a possible sender fault as pressure problems usually get worse with a warmer engine (oil thinner) rather than better.

if its an on/off question. then i think you have enough pressure..

(looks like the switch reacts fine on the pressure change)

if it stays of then its the switch else its the pump or the oil filter etc..??

TKS

had this problem in my series 3 landrover last year. Oil light would be ok at first then as the engine warmed up, it needed more and more revs to go out. I'll put money on the pressure sender unit being at fault. Inside ther is a small diaphramn that develops a pinhole leak. As the oil thins, it releases pressure and so makes the unit inaccurate. Only £5 to cure it

Have you considered taking the bulb out, this quickly solves the problem! Seriously though, i had the same problem and it was a sender fault.

Thanks Chaps,

It is a new sender (3 months ago) But i will get another to try.

I dont want to go to the expence of an oil preassure guage at the moment as I want to go to VDO clocks and intend to do that next year.

What if the pressure switch is OK?

I had a similar situation on my crossflow, and that was almost certainly due to the oil-pressure bypass valve sticking - I really didn't have any oil pressure unless the engine was running fast!

Now I don't know where the oil pump & its relief valve is on a Pinto - but if it's easy to get at then I'd be tempted to check it out.

David

a simple thing would be to replace the sender unit with a capri one, and get a capri dash gauge to see how much pressure you are getting. i coudl find one for you if you like - just a temp measure to re-assure your self that the pressure is fine.