300Tdi Oil Pressure readings

Hi all,

We have a 300Tdi Defender CSW and have recently installed a VDO oil pressure gauge (0-5 bars) to keep tabs on whats happening in the engine.

The car is currently on a test run up in the Highlands of Scotland after a lot of work to give it a bit of a shake down and we have noticed some readings outside the usual range. By this I mean I didn't expect to see the oil pressure drop as low as 1 bar (14.5 psi). The first time I noticed it was after a motorway drive and stopped at the lights. Is this normal?

We were hoping someone may have come across this before or know of a solution if this is in fact an issue.

We are currently running 15W-40 oil and the readings are as follows:

Cold start (idle): 3 - 3.5 bars (43.5 - 51 psi)

Normal running temp: 2 - 2.5 bars (29 - 36 psi)

Idle @ normal operating temp: around 1 bar (14.5 psi)

The only figures I have are for normal operating temperatures and speeds which are:
1.7 - 3.8 bars (25.0 - 55.0 psi)

My initial thoughts were that the oil is not thick enough for the older engine (234,189 miles and counting), however this may just be a normal reading??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dan.

i would check the pressure using a manual gauge to confirm the vdo system is reading correctly before looking for problems

Thanks for the reply.

I will have to wait until we return home and purchase some test equipment for the job. What sort of test gauge would you suggest?

Do you know where I could obtain the correct and more detailed readings I should be getting?

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,

Dan

id say that sounds about right to me.. but thats going off the readings i get for my merc, landys might need higher oil pressure.

vdo guage - is this electrical or mechanical? I never trust electrical oil presure guages always prefer mechanical.

Karlos28 said:

id say that sounds about right to me.. but thats going off the readings i get for my merc, landys might need higher oil pressure.

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Yeah well going by the figures I had it all seemed within limits and I was happy at first, but the figures didn't show or indicate that the pressure would normally drop to around 1 Bar (14.5 psi) after the car had been running for a while, warming the oil? So that just raised a slight concern as to whether this was a normal reading or not.

The Landy handled the 1800 mile trip through Scotland ok, but just need to know if the low pressure at idle could create problems down the line.

Dan

bmp42 said:

vdo guage - is this electrical or mechanical? I never trust electrical oil presure guages always prefer mechanical.

Click to expand...

The VDO gauge is an electrical gauge, it requires a pressure sensor installed where the Oil Pressure Switch is located. The feed to the gauge is then an electrical one.

It seemed to work fine all trip, however as Mystery mentioned earlier in the thread I will have to check the readings manually before investigating further.

Not sure how to go about that one as yet, without incurring too much extra cost??

Dan