HIGH Oil preasure

I know most people have a problem with low oil preasure, but I have just the opposite. I pulled the engine out of my 48 last month to install a rope seal in the rear main. I had to remove the crank to have it modified and remove the oil pump to get to the crank. When I reinstalled the engine and started it up the oil preasure was reading max on the gage.. I installed a Snap on or Mac Tool test gage and it read 45 # at idle with engine warmed up. I drove the car around the block with the gage taped to the outside rearview mirror and it read 57 # in 2nd gear at about 20 mph. When I put the engine back in I changed the oil and installed 20W-50 oil which I had in it before. When I first rebuilt the engine I installed a high volumn pump. Before the engine showed 25 # of preasure @ 50 MPH.

Does any one have any suggestions where I should start to look for excessive oil preasure problems? I don't want to blow out the new rope seal I just installed. If there is a blockage, I don't want to burn out any bearings downstream of the blockage.

Bill

Bill, seems if you put everything back together you really couldn't introduce any blockages. As the only thing you removed and had work done on was the crank, perhaps the grinder left some "plugs" or some debris in the oil passages of the crank? You would have noticed right away if they were completely blocked. As you know the only other things that govern the oil pressure are the 2 relief valves. The tappet relief valve really only has a large effect on the lifter system and if it was Stuck you'd get valves held off their seats. The relief valve in the pump is a possibility and it may be stuck shut but this seems improbable as you didn't monkey with any of these components. The addition of the seal is behind any oil passages so this couldn't be the problem.

If you blew thru the oil passages on the crank and they were clear then perhaps the problem lies with the pump relief valve is not unseating during high pressure or perhaps it's not un-seating until you build up close to 80 psi? I believe the original system was designed for 50 psi. Dee