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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - weird oil pressure behaviour

Hi folks, it's been a while but I think I have fun oil pressure teaser for you all! This has happened twice that I have noticed.

Start the car. Oil pressure builds up fine.

I drive to the end of the road where I slow down and stop at the junction before pulling out the junction.

At this point the oil pressure drops really dramatically before slowly (maybe a couple of seconds) recovering to normal.

Pressures seem OK all the rest of the time after that. Just this momentary big loss puzzling me.

Its a 1500, 20w60 oil and a small oil cooler with thermostatic sandwich plate.

Cheers,
Malcolm

Malcolm Le Chevalier

Check oil level mine behaved strange when it needed topping up
mark heyworth

Faulty guage? Do you have a spare you could try as a check?
GuyW

What Mark said. Mine does that too. Top up the oil and the reading is normal.
Martin

Simple as that? I will give it a go.

I did check the level, it was near max but that was before I set off and so with everything drained back into the sump. It must take a lot to prime the system and drop the level low.

I will have a look this morning. Sunny out and it's Drive It Day! :-)
Malcolm Le Chevalier

I had the same issue and ive got an oil cooler as well and the system got a little low and the oil pressure was fluctiating rapidly until i figured that out

Also in the same vain because the weqther is not cold or hot kind of goldie locks it could also be the thermostate in the oil cooler is in the gray zone middle of the temp range and trying to figure out if it wants to stay closed or open up and free the oil ... of corse once the engine temp gets to normal operating temp then the thermostate knows what to do and weather to open or close off the oil flow

Prop
1 Paper

This thread was discussed between 22/04/2017 and 23/04/2017

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