I guess these gauges are calibrated pretty low

[Fritz Maurer]

If it had any meaningful oil pressure I'm guessing the factory gauge would be buried.

 

[4wdtom]

If it had any meaningful oil pressure I'm guessing the factory gauge would be buried.View attachment 99947View attachment 99948

I forget what the spec is but if you have 10 or 12 psi you close and good. I have seen these engines run just fine with the needle on the factory gauge barely moving with hot oil. It's said that when the camshaft bearings get worn you loose oil pressure but there seems to be enough flow to keep them alive.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

Concur. Been servicing this tractor for 20 years and two owners and has always run great. Was a sloppy 12V conversion and put a lot of starters on it .... but had the fields changed for 12V and have been trouble free for about 4 years now. Good little tractor.

 

[4wdtom]

Concur. Been servicing this tractor for 20 years and two owners and has always run great. Was a sloppy 12V conversion and put a lot of starters on it .... but had the fields changed for 12V and have been trouble free for about 4 years now. Good little tractor.

If you really want to know the oil pressure why don't you try a 20 or 30 lbs. gauge? The 150 lbs. gauge you show isn't appropriate for the range you are trying to measure. A pressure gauge is designed to be used in about the middle half if it's range, that is the first 25% and the last 25% aren't as accurate as the middle range. And in this case the needle is so close to 0 it's hard to know what it is reading and likely isn't too accurate at that low pressure (for the gauge) anyway.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

I'll try that next time I service it ... when I put it on there I wasn't expecting the oil pressure of a V4 Wisconsin... all THEY do is squirt oil around, none of the bearings are under pressure.

 

[rrlund]

Yep. The first engine shop where my son worked, they had a WD come in and the guy wanted a complete major overhaul on it. They had me go pick it up and disassemble it. When they put it back together, the shop owner thought they needed to do some extras like new gauges. They bought some new aftermarket gauges for newer ACs I'm guessing, they said Allis Chalmers on them and showed in actual numbers. The pressure barely registered. They called a dealer and the mechanic told them as long as it showed some pressure on the original old gauge, it was fine. He said they didn't carry over about 10 psi new.

 

[Richard Nixon]

If it had any meaningful oil pressure I'm guessing the factory gauge would be buried.View attachment 99947View attachment 99948

We had a WC bought new and then a WD to go along with it. The local AC dealer, who was a top notch AC mechanic, said 5 psi was plenty. So, yes, that non AC gauge you show is calibrated way too high.

 

[4wdtom]

If it had any meaningful oil pressure I'm guessing the factory gauge would be buried.View attachment 99947View attachment 99948

A friend of mine who had a small engine shop before he retired and his son took it over told of being at an auction and getting a D-17 with a loader for a very good price because someone had put a oil pressure gauge on it with numbers and it only showed 8 or 10 lbs. or so and everyone else who was interested didn't want it because they thought it need engine work. He still has it and it still runs good and is fine.

 

[farmer52]

Oil flow is more important than oil pressure. However, the engine needs enough oil pressure to supply oil to all the critical parts.

 

[Aaron SEIA]

Pretty sure 12-15 is all they made when new and tight. Get a gauge that maxes out at 25 or so and see what it says.
AaronSEIA

 

[DrAllis]

The pressure that the gauge is showing is the pressure created inside the cotton string oil filter. It is NOT what the pressure really is at the main and rod bearings. There is a reason there aren't any numbers to go by.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

Makes sense. The Mason jar threads on the filter probably won't take much more pressure than that.

SO..... if the gallery pressure and the filter pressure are two different things, is it accurate what some are people claiming that paper filters cause engine failures?

How much PSI really is at the bearings?

 

[Fixingfarmer]

If it says 10 on your gauge you can bet you have 10 at the bearings. Pressure stays constant until the fluid is past the restriction. So once it squeezes out the side of the bearing is when pressure is gone until then fairly consistent at your pump outlet oil gallery to the bearings. What they are concerned about is creating too much restriction at the filter causing it not to go through the filter on some older ones they don’t filter all the oil it’s just added in a loop like the rest of the things off the galley. It’s a thing. It’s hard to tell if it’s an actual problem if it’s not filtering all the oil anyway my 2 cents is changing the fluid does more than the filter. If anything your engine should be saved by having that system as if the filter has been run too long or has too good a filter filtering too much shouldn’t it still be flowing to the main bearings maybe at slightly higher pressure if the wrong filter is in?

Till you run out of oil in the sump or get enough dirt and metal debris you start picking it up the oil sump (which even on a small capacity tractor a couple quarts of nasty dirt in the bottom while possible and has been shown in pictures here before is somewhat difficult to achieve) those tractors will supply oil where it needs to go if the pump is pumping

 

[Jim.ME]

Have you looked at the tube the filter slides on over? If it is missing, I would expect no oil pressure. An oversize orifice in it could cause a low pressure reading. I don't remember the correct size opening, but I expect DR Allis does.

The WIX/NAPA filter issue is old, like back around 2010, I think. WIX issued a new filter number when they corrected the problem. The current/correct filter number is WIX 57011 or NAPA 7011. The old WIX number was 51101 (NAPA 1101). The original 51101 used a packed media for filtering. Wix changed it to pleated paper and there was a significant oil pressure drop noted in the ACs that used that filter, enough that the complaints lead to WIX discontinuing the 51101 and replacing it with the 57011 having a redesigned filter media appears to be a type of material filling the housing liked the packed media did, which gave more backpressure, along with the regulating tube orifice, to increase oil pressures seen.

Edited to add info on WIX 51101 filter issue.

 

[steve(ill)]

as mentioned, the MAX pressure is about 15 psi at the filter... An old engine might have 10 psi at HIGH rpm and only 2-3 psi at idle.. The filter restricts the oil and only 15% goes thru the filter and drains back to the sump... 85% goes for lube NOT THRU THE FILTER.. The cam shaft is hollow and and a few orifice holes in it at each piston... oil is SPRAYED out of the camshaft holes AS IT ROTATES , up toward the wrist pin and drips onto everything... There is an oil galley down to the 3 main bearings for lube... Everything else is spray lubed.

 

[DrAllis]

B-C-CA engines have the connecting rod bearings spray lubed from the drilled and timed spray holes in the hollow camshaft. Main bearings also get their oil from the hollow camshaft down from the cam bearings thru the drilled holes in the block to the main bearings. The WC-WF-WD-WD45-D17 engines provide pressurized oil to all main brgs AND rod bearings thru the same type of hollow camshaft. Yes, the "bypass" style cotton string oil filter receives a small percentage of the total GPM of the oiling system. These Allis engines are unique in the fact that the engine block doesn't have a main oil galley. They used a hollow camshaft to be the main oil galley.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

Wow that's pretty interesting... but it must have worked, they already outlasted modern tractors 5 times over...

 

[shaun wallace]

I have a WC that runs between first mark and the N.

 

[Nordic]

The oil pressure can easily be increased on the 201/226 engines by placing washers as required inside the relief valve plunger in front of the spring. The plunger and the spring are easily accessed on the outside of the block by removing the big cap, right beside the dipstick, and pulling out the spring and the plunger. It will be a trial and error venture using washers as spacers until you get the desired pressure, the first attempt could be just removing the washer on the cap itself. The oil pumps in these engines have plenty of volume and pressure, providing the pump has good clearances. The reason I know is that recently I started up a 201 that had been inactive for decades. As I put a proper oil pressure gauge in place of the original A-C gauge it had 90 psi when cold and when warmed up the lowest was 29 psi. I was very relieved when I found out the plunger was stuck in the fully extended position. Once I got the plunger loose and cleaned up from the dried on crud everything worked with perfectly normal pressure at cold start up as well as warmed up.

We're talking about items 17, 18, 19 & 20 in the diagram.

 

[DrAllis]

If the engine has worn mains, rods and cam bearings, what you are proposing isn't possible. I'm not saying WORN OUT bearings, but bearings that have some years of service on them. Again, the pressure shown on the gauge is the pressure built by the resistance of the oil filter. The better condition the bearings are inside the engine, the more oil there is to go to the filter, hence raising oil pressure somewhat on the gauge. These engines don't as a rule make a ton of oil pressure. It is their nature.