Oil pressure

[peters3103]

Hi Gents,
My 3.8 is running approximately 40-45psi oil pressure at 2500 RPM at operating temperature. This drops to approximately 20-25psi at idle. Is this healthy?

Cheers,
Pete

[cactusman]

Sounds just fine

[MarkRado]

Nothing wrong in my opinion; you might want to check oil pressure with a direct acting gauge with a suitable scale. Watch out for a deep knocking noise from the main bearings at idle - this means too low a pressure.
Pressure on my 3.8 (60k miles) drops to somewhere to around or under 20 psi hot, but no knocking noise; I use 20W 50 oil.

[peters3103]

Definitely no knocks but I do have a lower timing chain rattle (I think). If that oil pressure is ok and oil consumption isn’t high (about a litre in 1000 miles at highway speeds) then I’ll just fix the rattle issue and make the sump/rear main oil tight as I don’t think a full rebuild is warranted.
(rebuilt 20000 mls ago)