low oil pressure fresh engine

[stroker70]

I have another issue with my Dragon that I need help with. The engine in my car was a fresh rebuild when I bought the car. I was told from a reliable source,the guy I bought it from could never get it started after putting the rebuilt motor back in the car and lost intrest in it about the time I inquired about purchasing it. I have spent plenty of weekends fixing the many screwed up items as I discover them. I am down to just few left to make it a reliable ride. The problem I want to address now is the low oil pressure. Lets start with the right side oil gallery that has the oil pressure valve and the oil pressue sender switch. My gauge does not work at all as installed. Mounted to the driver side at the gallery where the oil filter attaches it reads 20 psi at times but not always. Today I removed the pressure valve and see that it has already been shimmed with 4 thin washers inside the piston under the spring to boost pressure so I believe all is well with it. I started the engine without the sender in the gallery to see how much oil would come out and discovered that its not much at all. My question is this, is there a gallery plug that could be missing from the rebuild causing the pressure valve and sender to not work. Is the gallery plug behind the timing chain cover? I'm asking if this is plausible because I had the same exact problem with my Hudson Hornet and found an open gallery behind the timing cover. Plugged it and got instant normal oil pressure.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

It has been my experience with 1951-54 early special Kaisers that when the oil pressure sender unit starts to deteriorate (and they do normally over time, like any electrical device) it will read lower than actual pressure.  Do you know for a fact that the sender was replaced at the time of the rebuild?  How is the wiring?   I know that I gained 15 psi (or thereabouts) on the gage when I replaced the sender on my 1951 Kaiser Business Coupe and my 1952 Kaiser deLuxe.  Along the same lines, how is the water temp gage working?  My experiences wiith that sender indicates that as the water temp sender deteriorates, it also reads lower than actual temp and will not go above the halfway mark, no matter how hot the water is.

Fords and other cars with negative grounds tend to pin on the high side when senders deteriorate, but as the Kaiser has a positive ground, it will drop as it starts to go bad. 

[stroker70]

The sender looks new and it does signal the gauge when installed on the driver side gallery. I really think the right side gallery is open or severely leaking on one end. I want to make sure the plug is installed but need confirmation that its behind the timing chain cover before I start taking it apart. The shop manual is not clear on where it is.

[superk226]

Did you try installing a mechanical gauge where the electrical sending unit attaches and check the pressure?

[kenneth]

Okay the guy writes that there is very little oil coming out if he takes out the sender another sender wont help ,it sounds to me there is something wrong in the engine,if the oil channels in the crank has been cleaned out there could be a blind plug missing or a plug in the engineblock.Let us know if you find something!

[stroker70]

I have decided to pull the engine out and apart to diagnose the low oil pressure before major damage occurs. I suspect the wrong main bearings may have been installed as I can hear the crankshaft rattle under a load. I also have read that there is some sort of bushing in the block that the oil pump slides through that can block oil flow if it is not installed in the correct spot. Can anyone elaborate on how that bushind should look installed?

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

What about the pressure relief valve assembly?  If the sender is not the problem, the next thing in the most likely to be cause range is that the spring in the assembly has weakened over time and is sagging.  If this is the case, the plug part of the assembly opens prematurely and keeps pressure at 20psi or less.  I only had this problem on one of my K-F products over the years but it's worth checking out before the whole engine gets torn down.

If you had a leak in an oil gallery, odds are that you would see oil coming out of the head gasket area, in the radiator water, or out the tail pipe (in other words, you would see something amiss).

[stroker70]

The oil pressure valve spring already had a shim in it to stiffen the resistance so I am ruling that out as a problem. The rear main seal leaks anyway, so I am going to fix that at the same time. It already has the neoprene seal conversion but still leaks. Again I suspect the wrong main bearings possibly allowing the rear seal to leak. The plan is to pull the engine this weekend and pull it apart when I can to take some measurements. I have already removed most all the bolt on parts to the engine and discovered the intake manifold had what looked like two gaskets installed and it was burned in two in the center.(could have been a multi layerd gasket that was delaminated) I wonder if that gasket problem had anything to do with the hard start when cold problem I was experiencing.