Oil temp gauge installed

[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

Right. I don't think it is electrical at this point. I'm pretty sure I am just too low on the oil level. When moving (RPM above idle) my HV oil pump pushes enough oil to the top of the motor so the sensor is uncovered. Therefore I am reading the temp of the air in the oil pan. When stopped at an idle, enough oil comes back down into the pan to cover the sensor so it goes back up on the gauge. I'm going to put more oil in to see how that works. If it still isn't working well, I'll start chasing electrical gremlins. It is pretty much plug and play. Each end of the supplied cable has push and click connectors.

I spoke to Canton. They said this is an 8 qt pan. Minus what would go in the filter.

So, I take it then that 'system capacity' is 8 quarts - ~7 in the pan and the rest in the filter. You were running 2 quarts under that, so hopefully this solves the problem and gets the gauge reading as it should.

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by Luce

Even if the sensor is uncovered at times, I wouldn't expect the "air" in the crankcase to be that much cooler if any than the oil.

Agree.

I doubt the sensor is not picking a temperature reading because it becomes uncovered.

If the gauge read oil temp, and then suddenly reading cold, the sensor circuit is open.

How LONG does it take to read cold?

Gary

[Texasdoc]

It takes a minute or two to go cold. It isn't a sudden drop to zero. Just a slow decrease in temperature. Coming back up to temp is about 30-45 seconds.

Originally Posted by Luce

Even if the sensor is uncovered at times, I wouldn't expect the "air" in the crankcase to be that much cooler if any than the oil.

Maybe. I'm running the ME Wagner PCV valve which may be cycling a lot if air. I don't know. I'll test it later this week and report back. The oil level is just the easiest to fix. I'll start there.

[Jerry Clayton]

What is the temp number at the low side??????

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

It takes a minute or two to go cold. It isn't a sudden drop to zero. Just a slow decrease in temperature. Coming back up to temp is about 30-45 seconds.



Maybe. I'm running the ME Wagner PCV valve which may be cycling a lot if air. I don't know. I'll test it later this week and report back. The oil level is just the easiest to fix. I'll start there.

Ok, doesn't sound electrical, if it repeats this cycle from idle (reads ok) to some rpm (reads cold).

[Texasdoc]

Ok, I give up. I added the extra oil then Took a 15 minute drive around town today. The temp gauge only fluctuated from the low (bottom of the scale is 140) to around 145. I'd expect it to show warmer than that after 10 minutes of street driving. Maybe it takes longer that that to get more heat into 8 quarts of oil. I'll be at the track tomorrow and it is supposed to be around 90 degrees farenheit.

Connector is snug. Wires show continuity. Unless it is a bad sensor or gauge, I don't know what else. Next week I'll pull the sensor to check it with the boiling water trick.

[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

Ok, I give up. I added the extra oil then Took a 15 minute drive around town today. The temp gauge only fluctuated from the low (bottom of the scale is 140) to around 145. I'd expect it to show warmer than that after 10 minutes of street driving. Maybe it takes longer that that to get more heat into 8 quarts of oil. I'll be at the track tomorrow and it is supposed to be around 90 degrees farenheit.

Connector is snug. Wires show continuity. Unless it is a bad sensor or gauge, I don't know what else. Next week I'll pull the sensor to check it with the boiling water trick.

Did you get the same temperature fluctuations when driving and stopped that you had before? If not, I'd say you've solved the problem.

I'm running a slightly larger pan with a 460 than you are, and it takes a LONG time for the oil to get over 200°F - probably 20 minutes of highway speeds at ambient temperatures in the 80s. The engine also needs to be working a little to get the oil fully warmed up - street driving will take a VERY long time to warm up the engine, in my experience. Coolant gets fully up to temperature much, much quicker than the oil does.

[Dwight]

A few years ago I was trying to buy a stock 440 Mopar oil pan.

Some sites would list it at 4 qts and some 5 qts. Same pan. After a couple of hours I figured out some listed it with the oil filter capacity included. Maybe it is a marketing thing to may it sound like their product holds more oil.

I bought the 4 qt pan.

[CJ428CJ]

The temp gauge only fluctuated from the low (bottom of the scale is 140) to around 145. I'd expect it to show warmer than that after 10 minutes of street driving.

If you're running an oil cooler, 10 minutes isn't nearly long enough. My oil runs so cool that it practically never budges off the minimum reading (140F?) unless i'm driving really hard. I finally bypassed the oil cooler because I figured the oil was rarely getting hot enough to off-gas the moisture that naturally builds up in the oil.

[tortuga]

Originally Posted by Texasdoc

No oil cooler. I will see if I can figure out how far the crank counter-weights go into the pan and compare the oil level. I'll just add a quart or two of oil and see what the temp sensor does. I'll give Canton a call this week as well.

I'd still like to know how much distance there is between a stock crank and the oil level set by Ford. I may just do the math/geometry - figure out how much oil so it is just short of the crank. With the high volume pump, it will probably lower the level pretty quickly once the motor starts.

If I am doing the math right, the stroke is 4”, the rod bearings are 2.3”, so the largest radius of the crank would be 3.3”. Adding a fudge factor, I could set the level at 3.5-4 inches below the crank center line about be at about the max oil level.

When you are checking your oil, engine off with the dipstick almost your entire oil system apart from the filter and little pools here and there will be in the pan. The entire volume of the box at the bottom is 8.7 qts to the top., deduduct about 0.7 qts for the filter and there is an 8 qt fill, don’t think you want it to the top though, I run mine at 7 qts once it has filled the filter and cooler and hoses: 7 qts shutoff in the pan...

[Texasdoc]

Originally Posted by mln385

Make sure the sender reaches the oil, mine did that years ago and the builder had the sender to far back in the reducers for it to get in the oil bath.

Ding, Ding, Ding !!! I think we have a winner!

Was at the track this week and thought the increased oil was the fix. At the track the temp would show as it should. But when I drove around town it went back down to "cold".

Today I took the sensor out and tested it in water. It worked normally. I tested the gauge with resistors and it worked as well.

When I originally installed the sensor (1/8 NPT) into the pan (1/2 NPT) the hardware store didn't have the correct adapter. I had to use two different adapters to get it to fit. This pulled the sensor tip out of the oil bath. It was still covered with oil but wasn't getting much circulation. I do think the air flow around the pan was cooling the sensor as well.

I replaced the stacked adapters with the correct one and the sensor tip is now definitely in the bulk of the oil. I'm hoping this will work.