oil pressure dropping at idol

[silverado13]

im having them saem problem with my 97 k1500, i was thinking some thicker oil would help?

 

[Aloicious]

I seem to always get ~25psi at idle and ~40-50 psi under load using either 5w30 or 5w40. at least according to the cluster gauge, which I've never felt any of them are overly accurate, but its at least in the ballpark.

 

[silverado13]

i just dont want my oil pump to take a **** on me

 

[jeff's88silverado]

i thought these truck espically the tbi ones ran the fuel pump through the oil pressure switch so no oil pressure no power to fuel pump? or am I mistaking them for the astro?

 

[silverado13]

i dont know but thats a good idea, i know that my friends 2000 tahoe limited had the oil pump take a **** on him and it melted the motor

 

[MOBS]

Mine was a 5.7 tbi in my '95 with 198k mi and before I redid the engine, I noticed when it got good and hot that when you'd stop at a light or in a parking lot, the engine would start having lite lifter noise(excessive bearing clearances) and the oil pressure would've dropped to around 32psi, the sound would disappear once rpm reached 1200+. At the time it had 30w in it, switching to 50w made it so the idle psi never goes below 40, and stays around 60-62 at 2500rpm. The 10psi/1k rpm sounds very low to me, but the later model engines may have tighter tolerances allowing for more efficient oiling. That or I'm just paranoid about low oil pressure.

 

[jeff's88silverado]

Keep in mind it could be cluster or sending unit.

Yesterday evening i had class and we had to test oil pressure on something so we used my truck and the mechanical gauge on the tester never fluctuated like the gauge in the truck and i had around 10 more psi than my cluster was showing.

 

[DRAGGIN95]

I had a chevy truck that had 300k miles, it ran about 5 psi at idle and maybe 15 psi rev'd up, it was worn slap out but it still ran.

 

[scharst]

my truck does the same thing, it seems it does it more on highway too, my guess is a bad sensor cuz i catch it jump around a few times even at a constant rpm....i have 104000 miles on my truck so im pretty sure it is ok....mine will sometimes get damn near on the red line at a stop light...worries me sometimes but it still runs fine.check the pressure sensor and let me know what you find if it needs replaced, i might do the same thing.

 

[silverado13]

damn, 5 psi? thats low