Oil pressure adjust/relief valve

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joezek

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Just wondering if the relief valve is accessible without pulling the timing cover or the whole engine. New problem I'm having is that after exiting the highway and oil is hot, when you stop at the intersections the oil drops low enough to trigger the warning light. I understand the light is preset for either 10 or 15 psi. There are no noises or metal that I can see in the filter. I'm probably going to get a block and start doing a buildup of a new engine soon, but in the meantime I'd like this to survive and make more pressure. On my older Pontiac engines I was able to pull the oil pan and add a couple washers to the spring on the oil relief valve to pick up more pressure. Same on some of the airplane engines I work on.

Looking at pics of the oil pumps, it almost looks like there's a relief spring nut on the outside of the pump, same side as the filter housing.
 

Hamfisted

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The oil pressure relief valve is built into the oil pump at the front of the crankshaft (behind the timing cover...). How many miles on your motor ? What weight oil are you using ? I'd recommend a 10w-30 or 10w-40 synthetic and Motorcraft oil filter. If you do the timing chains / cam phaser replacement work it's a good time to swap out the stock oil pump for a high volume one at that time.

Melling Oil Pumps at Rock Auto


10341-2-ANG__ra_p.jpg

Pressure relief spring is under that cap on the left side of the pump above ....



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joezek

joezek

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This engine is on it's last leg and I'm halfway through a buildup of a new one. Last month I had broke a roller rocker which took out a cam lobe. THe engine ended up with all that metal in it. Then the oil pressure light started flickering at idle. I changed the oil and filter when replacing the rocker and lifter, and half ass smoothed out the cam lobe.

What I ended up doing to help it last a bit longer was to raise the idle to 850 and I'm running 50 weight aviation oil. The engine runs very quiet now and the light never comes on. I'm just babying it until I can finish this build up.

I wish Ford would have put a real oil pressure gauge on this thing instead of a fake one with a needle that always points straight up. Now I'm gonna have to install a real gauge, and a temp gauge as well on the rebuild.
 

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