freakin' freakout!

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

So I'm coming home from work, work my way into lane 2 (2nd left)
on I405 north, 65 mph, suddenly -- OIL light comes on! Crap! It
took me nearly a minute to get past lane 4, no way to shut the
engine off, I just took the load off... parked in the breakdown
lane right in the way of an onramp, coasting with the engine off
for the last 1/10th mile.

Since it didn't seize up, I devised some quick tests to see if it
was the (used, unknown vintage) pressure sender or really a pump
failure.

Dipstick said full and clean.

I pulled the distrib to look for a broken tang. Nope.

Oil cap off, the front-most rocker (#1 exh) was full of fresh oil.
Hmm. I blew into the hole to empty the rocker (got a face full of
oil).

Removed pressure switch, screwed it in very loosely.

Started the motor, revved once to about 1200, turned it off. Oil
had pumped out of the sender loose threads, and the rocker was
full again. So I idled it, lo, oil out the squirt hole in #1 exh
pushrod. Revving a bit, it squirt a lot out the pushrod.

Since I had at least some oil pressure, I limped to the next exit,
luckily a gas station there, took out the switch, the DVM in my
tool kit(*) says it's 300-ohms, weird. I rigged up 2" of hose I
cut out of the PCV hose, jammed the switch onto the gas station
air pump, held the DVM leads on it and inserted two quarters. I
was about two hands short to hold all this crap together, but the
switch didn't open even once, though the resistance wobbled all
over the place.

Bad switch.

Drove home just fine, 45 miles, didn't seize up that I noticed.


* I have a nice complete tool kit in the Rambler, I tossed it into
the Hornet for now. Glad I did! Will build another kit.

Few weeks back I bought a Summit mechanical oil pressure gauge to
install under the hood. I think this particular job will get done
this weekend now!