Reply to "Oil Pressure??.. What say you??..."

On the ever-recurring oil pressure subject, I'll add that very high pressures- however generated- can cause their own problems while not really curing anything. Specificaly, oil pressures in the engine over about 85 psi can cause lifter pumpup and valve float with hydrauilc cams (either flat tappet or hydraulic rollers) and also bearing erosion. In almost all non-drag race engines, a standard pump with std bearing clearances will give you 65-75 psi hot at 2500 rpms, and 15-20 psi hot at idle. No bigger pump is necessary unless you run oil coolers and remote oil filters on long undersized lines with lots of bends and fittings.
Note that you cannot get any meaningful info from a stock in-dash gauge, either. They are almost all inaccurate to the low side and there is no fix aside from complete replacement with a different brand. The problem is an inherent electrical mismatch between the Italian-made gaude and the U.S. made sender. I once borrowed 10 brand new stock senders from a vendor and ran them on our '72; I got 8 different pressures. And a mechanical gauge teed into the sender port gave a 9th reading- higher than all the electric gauge readings. As a rule of thumb with Clevelands, if you see REAL oil pressures below 5 psi at idle and below 30 psi at 2500 rpms hot, drive directly to the engine shop before you are forced to sweep up the guts of your engine off the street! A mechanical gauge added to the stock pickup on a 1/4-pipe tee will put your low-oil pressure fears to rest. Thomas Tornblom in Sweden did a comprehensive electrcal analysis on the oil gauge and its sender in the Sept 02 POCA News.
Note also that my cheap mechanical gauge is still teed in place on our engine after 16 years so its durability is also not an issue; the stock gauge I use as a 'warning light'. If I want to know real oil pressures (rarely), I open the decklid and look at the mechanical gauge. Finally, most of the thrown rods in wrecked 351-Cs I've seen are from the #1 and #2 cylinders- the two closest to the oil pump. So in my opinion, most so-called "flow problems" in a Cleveland aren't oil-flow related.