Oil Temp.

[allan horsfall]

Good morning gentlemen,
Silverstone was great, but we had a bit of a headache getting there, car is a mildly tuned Rover V8.
Left home at 6.30, a little cold but car was running fine, after about 15 miles stopped car to get wifes coat out of the boot, got back in and restarted it and noticed the oil temp starting to rise, pressure was OK so continued but kept speed down to a steady 50MPH. Temp kept rising to 150, water temp was fine at 80-90, oil pressure still OK. Further into the trip noticed oil pressure was fluctuating between 40-60 and temp was off the dial.
Parade lap went without incident.
Return journey kept a constant 50MPH. Water temp 80-85 (normal), oil temp 100 (tad high) oil pressure 40-50 (slightly high at times). On the odd times when I needed to increase revs ie hills, or overtaking, I could watch oil temp starting to increase.

So, is this a mechanical or electrical problem, my first thought was oil temp sender failure but as oil pressure also playing up now not so sure. Do I have to strip engine or dashboard?

Allan

[DavidA]

Had something similar - turned out to be the thin pipe from the oil temperature sender touching something hot (maybe an exhaust manifold) en route back to the gauge. The oil temperature is usually within 10 degrees of the water so your issue probably isn’t overheating.
Hope this helps
DavidA

[allan horsfall]

Thanks for coming back Dave but I should have mentioned its an electric gauge so no tubes!

Allan

[kdavies3]

As David already said, oil temp is generally within 10 degrees of the coolant, unless you're really going for it on a track or whatever.
My money would on a bad connection somewhere or a failing sensor.

[clive]

Initially I could not rely on my electric gauges until I changed he fuse box. The supplied fuses were the canoe type which did not connect well and led to a loss of voltage. Fitting a modern blade type solved that.

A quick way to check the gauges and senders is to swap the wires between the oil and water temp senders so the oil gauge reads the water temp and vice versa. If the oil temp was reading high and after swapping the wire the water temp reads high then the gauge and sender are OK.

[simonjrwinter]

Allan,
If you need a new gauge and sender, I’ve got these you can have cheap. Never fitted. Gauge, sender and various accessories
Simon

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[Keith56]

Hi Allan, what's your voltage stabiliser set-up? I guess you'd love it to be something like that rather than a real temperature problem....

I fitted separate Spiyda solid state stabilisers on each gauge to make sure they weren't affected by other issues.

Kieth

[clive]

Modern gauges such as the Smiths ones from Caerbont/Speedy Cables have built-in voltage stabilisers. These can be identified by the letter A on the body of the gauge such as ABF, APG and ATG. If you add another voltage stabiliser, there will be a further drop in voltage and subsequently the gauge will under-read.
My sump holds approx seven litres of oil and takes a long time to get to temp. It also has the exhaust headers very close to it and I think that leads to an increase in oil temp when pushing hard. I bought a small infra red thermometer to test the outside temp of the sump and radiator against the gauge readings and they do agree with each other.
I have also noticed on hot days when driving at motorway speeds in fifth gear the engine temps do get a bit high, but if I drop down a gear, the temp drops too as the water pump is spinning faster allowing more flow through the radiator. This might help with oil temp too.

https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-too ... 57934.html