Oil Pressure Zero

[racing]

Hi Stefan,

be carefull to say that running without pressure for 2 seconds will not cause damage.
That depent on the rev you have at this time. To rebuild the engine again is very
expensive.( as we all no )
For my opinon it is absolut essential to start / turn the engine first time without ignition
with the starter.( spark plug not attach )
So you fill up the oilfilter, the oil circuit in general and check that everything is working well with
out the risk of damage the engine.

regards Andreas

[Stefan Elshout]

yes okey, i get that.... But i said that because i installed an engine in an alfa romeo 33 once, the engine fell out the crane while somebody dismantled it at the junkyard. After it was installed in my car i drove it for 75km and found out that the oil-pressure switch wasn't working, and the oil-pipe down to the oil-sump was broken. Fixed it, and 4 years/90.00km later it's still running perfect. So i noticed that the engines can handle a lot before it will cause damage. Beside that i totally agree that if you can prevent it, that's what you have to do.

[Geoff]

My vote is that startup is critical.

I once was in a bearing plant that made huge bearings for military and industrial equipment, such as generators and submarines. They had a babbit bearing housing, tolerances in the hundreds of thousandths of an inch, about 3' across in diameter! The babbit was in four quadrants, or quarter sections of the circle. It was about 1' wide. Each quadrant piece of bearing could float a wee bit to align closer to the shaft as it came to rest.

They said the reason was that in the long shafts of submarines, the shafts had a tendency to settle at one resting spot, and in the wee moment of startup, any slight intolerance would cause damage. The floating section of bearing would get a closer alignment to the shaft, and avoid wear on the shaft.

The photo is of the housing, and you can see inside the mounting points for the quadrants, and the sliding sleeves on the outside.

[ekranoplan]

Nice Engine Andreas!

Did you polish those rockers?

[racing]

not only polish; they have now all the same ( reduced) weight. And maybe you can see the springplates are
different from the original. I have made them in Aluminium ( tensil strength 500 N/mm² ) and anodise to reduce the weight, too.
The engine reves up like a bike engine. Compressionratio 11:1 with CPS- Piston. Cams with speciall racing profil.
( and and ...)

regards
Andreas

[georges2]

Hi from France; please see what I wrote in december 2007 on the french Fulvia forum after a complete rebuitl of my 1300 engine :
1) onjour à tous et merci à Florent pour la prise des mesures
sur ma voiture (série 1 1300 S Rallye,novembre 1970, moteur 818302 mais frappe 818303 sur la cloche d'embrayage)
les mêmes mesures donnent
37 cm de la collerette au niveau maxi
39 cm au niveau mini
41,7 cm à la pointe de la tige
le mécanicien a mis exactement 4,5 litres d'huile au remplissage du carter; voiture dotée d'un radiateur d'huile. Le niveau actuel est "pile" sur le repère maxi de la jauge
Conclusion : les jauges sont différentes selon la série
2) Concernant le mano et le témoin de pression, sous réserve que les deux soient correctement calibrés, je vais tout faire pour mettre en place un témoin. J'ai cassé mon moteur (vilebrequin + une bielle) par manque d'huile et c'est ma faute. Avec ce niveau insuffisant, quand j'ai roulé à allure soutenue en grimpant une colline, l'aspiration de l'huile dans le carter n'a pas pu se faire. Evidemment je ne regardais pas mon mano dans chaque virage ! en revanche, s'il y avait eu un témoin, il m'aurait sauté aux yeux !!
Deuxième conclusion : on met la ceinture ET les bretelles.
3) Dernier point relatif au redémarrage du moteur remis à neuf : le mécanicien a d'abord fait tourner la mécanique sans bougies, sans compression, avec le démarreur. Il avait rempli d'huile par la base du filtre et mis de l'huile à l'intérieur de la pompe. Pourtant la pression n'est pas montée immédiatement, le filtre ne se remplissait pas.[/b] Il a dû redémonter la pompe d'huile pour la remplir à nouveau, car il subsistait une poche d'air en haut de la pompe, qui empechait l'amorçage. Une fois bien rempli la pompe, tout s'est mis a fonctionner normalement. Conclusion : attention quand on redémarre un moteur qui n'a pas tourné depuis longtemps. le réamorçage de la pompe n'est pas forcément immédiat.
Désolé, mon intention n'est pas de faire peur, mais de partager mes petites expériences..

When refilling the engine, the oil pump is not feeded, so it pumps only AIR ! and oil pressure is ZERO; the professionnal mechanics had to take off the embasement of oil filter and fill oil directly in the oil pump; after this, everythig worked fine
Sorry for the french original text....the first part is about the lenght of the oil gauge, the second is about fitting a special lamp to alert driver when oil pressure comes down (much faster than the original pressure gauge) and the third about filling the oil pump
Best regards