Hello all! My name is Nathan, 21 years old, and this is my first Y-Block build. I stuffed this engine in my little '31 Model A coupe my dad and I built together. I have a 1960 292 block, bored .060 over, off set crank ground to the 312 stroke (314ci). 11:1 compression, cam is a clay smith cam, 240 duration @.050 and .485 valve lift. '57 ECZ-G heads. FRESHLY BUILT ENGINE. All new parts from John Mummert. Only have close to 2,000 miles on the car. Anyway...

Seems to be when I come to kind of a hard stop (I'm not locking the tires up) or make a hard left turn the oil pressure drops down to around 10-20 psi then jumps right back up between 50-60 psi. I am honestly not sure if this is a new occurring thing or has been happening but I just noticed it. I watch the oil pressure gauge like a hawk so I'm surprised if it had been happening and I haven't noticed it. before. Course typically when you're coming to a stop or hard stop there is a reason and you're paying attention the road haha. I'm running 10w-40 high zinc Royal Purple HPS oil. The oil level is good, and the sending unit isn't bad, those are the things I checked first. I have a rear sump truck oil pan on the engine. Is this a normal thing? Should I be concerned? Obviously the oil is going away from the pickup when I make these actions, just wondering if something possibly fell off the pickup?

Thanks in advance for all the advice!

-Nathan

Welcome Nathan! That is a good looking car! I'm sorry I can't give you any input on the oil pressure. Can you give us some information about the headers on the engine and how the exhaust if configured? Also, what kind of wheels are they? 
Thanks, Gene

Thank you Gene! And yes, we made Tri Y Lakestyle headers. The object of tri Y headers is for the two exhaust valves that feed any one of those Y's to be as far apart on the firing order as possible. That increases the velocity of the exhaust gases leaving through the header, because there is only exhaust from one valve going through any Y at any time. Then they all come together in the third Y. We did Tri Y for low end torque. The headers are different on both sides cause of the firing order.



And the wheels are '40 Ford, the original wheels off my dads '40 coupe.

I would try adding an extra quart of oil and see what happens. The pan may not have any baffling and the pick up is being uncovered.. Love your Y powered car :-)

Thank you very much!! And I added a quart, seemed like it helped. I talked to Tim McMaster, he said most stock pans don't have baffles and he usually makes one from a piece of 10ga and welds it in there. I'll probably do the same. But it's not a big deal that it's happening right?

I've experienced that while coming to a stop, with a truck pan with no baffle.  I never noticed it happening while turning, though.  When stopping, it didn't need to be a hard stop for it to happen.

There are also different oil pick ups and one of them is designed quite terribly, in my opinion, possibly making the problem worse.

I switched to a factory baffled pan but also added a gate to the baffle so now practically no oil can move away from the sump while stopping.  That fixed the pressure drop while coming to a stop and that was with the pickup I consider to be terrible.

I can add some pictures and I probably have a spare pan for measurements, if needed.


Lawrenceville, GA

Hm maybe I'll end up doing that. But I just remembered the pan I have on this engine does have the baffle in it. I remember seeing it. I think I'm going to pull the pan off tomorrow and check things out. Oil pressure gauge seems to be doing a lot of bouncing around all of sudden, like something is loose? Always stays between 50-70psi though. Only time it goes down to 10-20psi is when I stop hard.

Thanks for the advice!! I appreciate it

Y's guys rule!
Looking for McCullouch VS57 brackets and parts. Also looking for 28 Chrysler series 72 parts. And early Hemi parts.

MoonShadow, 292 w/McCulloch, 28 Chrysler Roadster, 354 Hemi)
Manchester, New Hampshire

That's very good to hear!!

They were one of the better headers, but not the best.
http://forums.y-blocksforever.com/Topic55379.aspx?

Check your oil pump bolts, and the inlet tube nut.  If any of those are loose, you can have pressure problems.


Lawrenceville, GA