no oil pressure

[Mike Ostrov]

About 5 years ago, one winter, I built a TC to keep busy. Yesterday, decided to fire her up. She has been stored and rotated monthly by hand with new oil and was run for an hour on my engine/transmission test stand. Water ok, oil clean and full, plugs out, coil wire removed, fully charged battery and my 250 amp charger hooked up.

I usually do 12 to 15 second starter cranks.

No surprise............no oil pressure.

I fabricate all my hard brake lines in stainless steel tubing and the -3 flex Aeroquip lines for the calipers, the -4 lines for the oil pressure gauge line and all the carb lines,-6 for tank to the original glass bowl mechanical pump and -8 for the oil cooler.

Easy to remove the -4 gauge/oil pressure line at the block, attach a drain line and pour in a pint or so of new oil to fill the oil galley. One can use a pump squirt can or other method.

Then I attach my air line with regulator at 5 to 10 psi and pressurize the oil galley, pump, etc.

Leaving the oil drain line attached, another 12 second spin of the starter motor and out comes a gusher, just like a new oil well.

Reattach the oil pressure line, another starter turn over and 35 psi on the gauge.

Takes about 10 to 15 minutes for this proceedure. Hope it works for you.

Cheers. Mike. PS: please give serious consideration to replacing the plastic oil pressure line as standard on early Ford engines. Same plastic line was used on our Lady Coventry Climax engines. Wont mention, sitting on the grid in my RHD SCCA D prod 1340 cc Super Seven, waiting for the starter to drop the flag (those were the days of standing starts). He points to me, on the outside of the front row, gives me the "throat cut the engine signal" and points to the spreading oil mess on my right side. Yep, the original plastic line was toast! Took a few bags of 25 pound grease sweep to clean it up.