The Ongoing Saga Of My Shagged Mi16 Engine

[maturin23 10]

I'm sure when I was working on my Mi16 conversion I remember Kieran mentioning that Pug didn't fit an oil pressure gauge to the 405 Mi16 precisely because the reading were all over the place and would freak out the owners - they just used the low pressure light.

 

This was 6 years ago, so my memory may be faulty.

 

Neil is right though - the car is now driving you mad

 

Do your bodges, expect the engine to go bang, put a little cash aside each month for a replacement, get AA/RAC/ADAC cover - and then you are covered in any eventuality.

[maturin23 10]

I'm totally chilled about this, honestly.

 

:lol:

[GLPoomobile 958]

Neil is right though - the car is now driving you mad

 

It's not. I went past that point loooong ago!

[Anthony 1,003]

For christs sake GLP, you cannot deduce engine behavoiur that accurately from the guessometer. If you are worried about oil pressure fit a proper gauge, you will most likely find your oil pressure to be far better than you think it is. Trying to determine anything meaningful from the standard gauge is a lottery.

This, 100%.

 

The standard oil pressure gauge is not accurate and is certainly not suitable for using to determine the health of your engine - if it at best there purely to give you a rough indication of relative oil pressure, and at worse, purely there as something to backup the low oil pressure light. Pretty much my attitude for the standard gauge is thus - at idle if the low oil pressure light isn't on, it's fine, and with the revs up, so long as the oil pressure needle is somewhere around the middle half of the gauge it's fine.

 

I'm only casually asking if anyone else has noticed similar behaviour, as there's no harm in asking. I already stated in an earlier post that I'll be connecting up another guage, and depending on the result of that I might have to get a garage to fit a mechanical gauge to get a proper reading. But if someone has seen this behaviour before and thinks it's normal then I'd hope that they chip in and tell me. It's not going to massively change the situation but every bit of info helps.

The standard gauge does not increase and decrease smoothly and certainly doesn't do it in "real-time" with what the engine is actually doing, so please don't try and deduce anything from it juddering and shaking as it goes from one position to another. When you run the standard gauge alongside a mechanical gauge, you realise just how poor the standard gauge is - the mechanical gauge will have gone from one point to another when you blip the throttle before the standard gauge has even moved, and both will show different values when the standard gauge eventually wakes from its slumber and drags itself around the gauge.

 

Honestly Steve - that I'm aware of, you only ever use your car on the road rather than taking it on track, correct? If so, just keep the oil level on maximum and don't worry about it - for road use, you really don't need to worry about oil pressure. On the road, it's coolant temperature that'll typically be the death of an engine, and thankfully, that gauge is somewhat more reliable - keep an eye on that one, and all will be fine

[jackherer 543]

I'm sure when I was working on my Mi16 conversion I remember Kieran mentioning that Pug didn't fit an oil pressure gauge to the 405 Mi16 precisely because the reading were all over the place and would freak out the owners - they just used the low pressure light.

 

This was 6 years ago, so my memory may be faulty.

 

Yes, I definitely said that

 

I suspect it was a last minute decision presumably after getting a bad reaction from BX 16v buyers (who did get gauges) as the engines still have the sender fitted! You would have expected them to just fit a blanking plug to save money.

[Anthony 1,003]

I suspect it was a last minute decision presumably after getting a bad reaction from BX 16v buyers (who did get gauges) as the engines still have the sender fitted! You would have expected them to just fit a blanking plug to save money.

You'd have thought so, but then again, most XU9 engines (and many XU5's) seem to have the senders fitted regardless - even when that particular variety of engine was never fitted into a car that had an oil pressure gauge.

 

(as an example, the late Phase 2 205 auto in my local scrappy at the moment has an oil pressure sender fitted on the block, but has a base model dash on it and thus the sender is sat there unconnected)

[Alastairh 47]

For christs sake GLP, you cannot deduce engine behavoiur that accurately from the guessometer. If you are worried about oil pressure fit a proper gauge, you will most likely find your oil pressure to be far better than you think it is. Trying to determine anything meaningful from the standard gauge is a lottery.

 

Deffo. My t16 ran 1.6 bar oil pressure difference between digital SPA gauges and the Peugeot gauges at full chat.

 

Al

[GLPoomobile 958]

Another update.

 

I think I found out why my oil pressure readings have dropped (no, I still haven't had time to connect up a proper gauge). During a short stint of rather aggresive throttle action coming down the A1 last night (for those who seem convinced that I'm paranoid, I can assure you that I drove it like I stole it on numerous occasions during this weekends Edinburgh trip ), I looked down to see the guage had gone from it's usual 4th mark down to......err nothing! I backed off, and it didn't move for a few seconds, and then slowly came up and settled at around the 2nd mark, which is lower than it should be. I then noticed it would go down on light acceleration.

 

So my two immediate thoughts were loose crank bolt or dodgy wiring. I immediately decided the former was unlikely since that was Miles' doing, and I remembered the problems I had when I first bought the car due to a bad connection on the sender, and decided the latter was most likely. To be on the safe side, I did crawl the 30 odd miles back home very carefully.

 

I'd had to do a 'bodge' a year or two back as the tab on the sender had snapped off (which is why I had duff readings before) and I didn't fancy paying the extortionate price for a new sender just because the tab had snapped. So I soldered a short length of wire to the nipple, put some tape over it, and connected up the original wire using spade terminals. It did the trick and has been fine all this time. In fact it looked fine when I just looked at it from under the car, but I decided to give it a wiggle anyway and it pulled straight out from under the tape. So I guess the connection has been slowly breaking down for a while and that is why the readings have dropped ever so slightly, until last night when it finally went and was only just keeping a contact.

 

Apart from that, despite a steady seapage of coolant out the front it's not loosing a great deal of water. Barely anything on the way up, and maybe 1/4 of a litre on the way back (not surprising given the abuse it got ). There's still a reasonable amount of mayo in the cap, but it's extremely watery and a good few drips come out of the breather pipe. Oil looks OK. It seems to go OK (well enough to embarrass a Volvo 850 T5 in a straight line a couple of times ) although it's not quite as smooth on idle anymore.

 

Apologies if some of the above comments have cross the line in to boy racer territory, but we all have our moments

Edited August 17, 2010 by GLPoomobile