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The importance of an oil pressure gauge!!!


jagwit

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Right that's it!! From now on ALL my engines will get an oil pressure gauge which will sit right next to my coolant temp gauge.

I took a drive in the D2 with my family on Sunday to a Jaguar Club event. As I came to a stop at the end of the off-ramp, I just happen to notice that the oil light started blinking at me. As soon as I applied a bit of revs it would go out and stay out. This had me worried and I checked the oil level which was good. Got home in this way and connected up my oil/fuel pressure gauge.

Sure enough. At 2000 rpm I only got 1.5 bar and it should be 3.4 bar as per manual. At idle the pressure would hardly register on the gauge.

Pulled the engine today, and stripped. I was worried that this blond (moi!) did not apply lock-tite to the little screws that hold the oil pump in place. No problem there. Now I'm worried. Just yesterday I was telling Peter (twingduna) "You only have problem when you can't explain the symptom". I was not running out of explanations.

Pulled one of the big end bearing caps off. Looks as new! (Thanks no doubt to the Mobil 1 V-Twin fully synthetic oil I was running)

Well, I wanted to replace the semi-race cam with a standard cam, so I proceeded to pull the lifters and the cam.

Then I saw it....

The rear most cam bearing shell had come out of the block. That is where the oil pressure escaped.

BTW, these lifters had now done about 10 000km. They show no trace of having been used. Cam also looks brand new. This re-inforces my view that my choice of oil works well. I have chosen Mobil 1 V-twin (20W50) as this oil has the highest % ZDDP that I can find. Using an oil with inadequate levels of ZDDP will kill your cam and lifters (particularly on the Rover V 8).

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Fully synthetic oil is great if the engine is properly bedded in but I wouldn't run it if you've just re-ringed/rehoned the engine or it is a new build. It will smoke like a chimney and you will get glazed bores and loss of power

I've heard this being stated many times before but I decided I would rather opt for an engine that takes longer to bed in than compromising the cam/lifters with inferior oil. This is why I went with the Mobil 1 immediately after the 4.6 rebuild. Whilst I can not comment on the bedding in issue, I can state that my engine did not smoke at all and did not use any oil.

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