Low oil pressure

magnummopar said
Good thing I have never seen a Taurus, Hundai, Toyota Tercel, Mazda 2200, anything Mitsubishi, Neon, Civic, etc. You are correct, I am just making it up to look like a dumb ***. I have never worked on cars before so I dont know ****.

OP go ahead and put 10w30 in it, drive it hard and if it eats itself you can blame the "expert" advise you got from guys that might be a plumber, waiter or maybe a gas station attendant. I certainly havent seen anybody claiming to be a professional mechanic respond. I even asked but got no answer. Its pretty easy to be an arm chair quarterback!

Anybody else with with a shop or professional experience care to chime in?

At least now you know what oil to run in your 5 cyl GM, Honda or Blazer :D

You said it, not me. Still nothing to back up your claim,but quick to dismiss everyone else. Yeah, some stuff can crap out early, and it did back then too. Most people today don't even give a crap to change the oil even if the dash dings after it's 7k-12k oil change interval algorithm, which is likely why you're seeing them wear out. Any type of reasonable maintenance they go forever.

I've had engines with low oil pressure, which were weirdly all small block mopars. Every one had either sludged up pickups (from previous owner lack of maintenance), a failed oil pump screen sucked into the tube, or eroded cam bearings, usually followed by worn rod bearings. At some point it's gonna have to come apart if you care about it at all, thick oil or not. You can run it loose but it won't last forever. Let's say he gets 20 at hot idle on 20W-50 when its 40 degrees outside, a good avg temp for this time a year in MO. To me that's still time to take it apart if you want it to live a long time. It may come back just by swapping the filter away from a fram orange can. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen it.

Also, is he experiencing a spike in pressure at cruise when you let off the throttle? A sure sign of worn bearings.

FWIW: the '70 Service manual recommends 10W-30 as well for general use. 20W-40 in temps "consistently above 32 F" and says you can use 20W-50 in "racing environments"

The oil from today provides far better protection for bearings at least (maybe not flat tappet cams) than oils of when these cars were made.

"Professional shop experience" which has a pretty wide definition doesn't make you an expert on oil either. Whatever though.