Oil pressure problems!

[Renier Nelspruit RSA]

I lost my oil pressure recently on a long trip on my 2L S1
We went twice through the “drop the sub fame” exercises and want to get every thing right this time

The pump mating area to the crank case – Do one use an O-ring (it is grooved) or a gasket
Where can one get a new relieve spring (44.4mm) P # 82325476
Where can one get a new pressure sender unit
New oil pump / Other Fiat stabled pumps that will also work
Is it possible to have the pump refurbished
I live in South Africa and neither the 132 Fiats nor the Betas were sold in numbers, aftermarket / OEM spares are not available.

Felix can only assist with 2nd hands and I don’t want to travel down this road again.

When I drive constantly at revs (4000/4500) the engine starts leaking oil around the filter assembly dipstick area. Is it excessive sump pressure or poor crank case ventilation.

Any assistance will be appreciated

[Jim Keller]

Lot of questions,

I am pretty sure the oil pump uses an "O" ring, but someone will have to back me up, it's been a long time since I overhauled one

I am pretty sure about any of the normal vendors can sorce you the parts your looking for, may take several contacts and waiting for them to run one down, but they should be able to fix you up on any part between the group. And always watch eBay

Ormicron
Beta Boys
MidWest 124
MidWest X1/9
Bayless
International Auto Parts
Vick's Auto Sport
C. Obert, (see his post in "Introduction" section, and we should reply to that BTW)
And many more, I think there are a few in closer yet to you!

I have yet to have a Beta pump worn out even close to what the book says is tolerable slop, and never had the need to do any more than throughly clean and re-gasket a pump, but I have only done 5 Lancia engines and haven't touched one for rebuild in 5 or 6 years, it's just a couple metal gears in a housing that directs the oil in one direction

Got any Fiat 124's/2000's Spiders? they use a lot of cross parts, not sure if you can use a Fiat 2000 Spider oil pump by simply chaning the pickup or not?? anyone?

Oil leaking out around the stick could simply be a bad seal for the dip stick, or it could be a plugged cyclone vent trap or real bad rings suffering blow by enough to over pressurize the crank case, pushing splashed oil out the seals.


The more detailed the explenation of the symptoms the better we can deduct what's going on, so any more info you can offer will help us

[HFStuart]

Definitely uses an O ring.

Guy Croft (UK) should be able to help you too ( http://www.guy-croft.com/ )

Stuart

[len_newstrum]

Once the pump is out you can measure (vernier calipers are cheap--about $25US) the ID of the bore, the width of the the o-ring groove, the diameter of the shaft, and the diameter of the groove. That is enough to determine the 0-ring needed. O-rings are almost always standard off-shelf parts obtainable through auto-supply houses. I suspect that with some diligent searching of the web you could find "how to select o-rings" on some o-ring manufacturer's site. I used to have a manual, but that was 50 years ago. :)

Check your dipstick. At least on my '78s, it is possible for the rubber stopper at the top of the stick to be pushed down so the it reads incorrectly, causing you to overfill the crankcase. Not too likely, but possible. I have some leakage around the area you are concerned with. It appears to be either the intake cam housing gasket or the front camshaft seal. If you can degrease the top/front of your engine thoroughly and see if you can figure out where it is coming from.

Len Newstrum

[Jim Fierst]

To answer Jim's question.. Fiat 2L pumps are of no use to you ,they are longer.. I looked for a new pump for a 2L here in the US but to no avail. I too have measured several pumps relative to gear to wall and gear to gear clearence and found them to all be on the lower side of tolerances.

[Will]

I have a few questions to ask: How is it that you determined you lost oil pressure? Did the oil light go on or merely the gauge reading very low? Was it accompanied by other cues like a knock or valvetrain noise?

In my personal experience, it has alway been the oil pressure sender- internally, it contains a diaphrarm and arm assembly. The diaphragm fails and develops a leak that equalizes pressure within the unit and causes it to read low (or zero).

The actual pump should last in excess of 100K miles. I have never seen radial wear on the housing. This does not even make sense to me logically how one would get radial wear on the housing, sometimes there is scoring on the end face between the gears and pump body. The only other contact in the pump body is the pin on the internal of the driven gear, and the contact faces between the drive gear and the driven gear, which are a nice involute profile so wear on them should be near zero.

Due to gravity and the rake of the gear teeth, the gears push downward. This puts all of the end wear/scoring on the pickup side. You can dress or machine the pickup face flat again and solve that problem. Also, the driven gear can be taken out and flipped over. This changes the wear side of the tooth and changes gear end-for-end or top -to-bottom, which should help correct for any wear caused by lack of parallelism. There's a little hole in the center of the driven gear, you'll want to check that to make sure it's not clogged and there's a corresponding annular groove in the pin it fits over which you will also want to make sure is clear.

Because the gears' tooth faces do not have a polished factory surface, any wear at all will be readily visiible.

Springs, etc. are good forever.

If you have no other indicators than your gauge, don't waste your time with the pump IMO. It seems to always, always be the sender. Some of the replacement pumps are worse than even a worn OEM one would be, several people have had problems with them. A casual exam and clesaning of the stock pump folowed by a surfacing of the pickup if necessary should constitute a "rebuild" of thje stock pump IMO, unless you have had some other problem like water intrusion.

[gman]

I lost my oil pressure recently on a long trip on my 2L S1


We went twice through the “drop the sub fame” exercises and want to get every thing right this time

The pump mating area to the crank case – Do one use an O-ring (it is grooved) or a gasket
Where can one get a new relieve spring (44.4mm) P # 82325476
Where can one get a new pressure sender unit
New oil pump / Other Fiat stabled pumps that will also work
Is it possible to have the pump refurbished
I live in South Africa and neither the 132 Fiats nor the Betas were sold in numbers, aftermarket / OEM spares are not available.

Felix can only assist with 2nd hands and I don’t want to travel down this road again.

When I drive constantly at revs (4000/4500) the engine starts leaking oil around the filter assembly dipstick area. Is it excessive sump pressure or poor crank case ventilation.

Any assistance will be appreciated

Hi Renier im afraid i have bad news, when my lancia beta started leaking around the filter area and especially AROUND the dipstick i almost lit the car on fire thats how angry i was .. i had paid detailed attention into ensuring that the whole under carriage/chassis was sanded down to bare metal then coated with stone chip and then i used CHIP FOOSES DYNAMAT to covr most of the areas..

i payed very close attention to detail only using stainless steel bolts powercoating the engine parts to look like nice... after all of this i did the timing on the engine and the engine started straight up, when i looked at the dipstick after 5 min or so the oil started "Spitting" out slowly. i didnt want to waist money in reboring the block so i got me some HASTINGS oversized rings and grinded the ring so that the ring gap would be according to the book.. even though i knew that not all the bores would wear evenly i took a chance... anyways to my dissapointment after i put the engine back in it still spat out oil... i know what a waist of time

so i rebored the block back to its original size , i think it was R2000 and got some original lancia fiat rings... put the engine back in
and i never saw oil out of anywhere again. you definatly have sump compression i can guarantee it

a way to check is to start the car and pull the dipstick completly out and check if its spittng oil out..

BUT TRUST ME IF ITS SPITTING OIL OUT OF THE DIPSTICK LIKE YOU SAY THEN ITS DEFINATLY SUMP COMPRESSION.. IVE HAD TWO LANCIAS WITH THIS PROBLEM AND THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE IT IS TO REDO THE BLOCK

GOODLUCK..

[omicron]

Sorry we don't have many spare parts. I (personally) have a spare Monte oil pump and we (company) have a couple of VX oil pumps but they're not new.

[HFStuart]

Renier,

This has just turned up on E-Bay Germany. The price is hideous but you could try an offer I guess.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Olpumpe-Lancia-Beta-1300-1600_W0QQitemZ360131227975QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAutot eile_Zubeh%C3%B6r?hash=item360131227975&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A4%7C65%3A10%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

Stuart

[Renier Nelspruit RSA]

We definitively have a pressure problem. I know the instruments on these cars are purely cosmetic.

Starting the car again there was a distinctive wear noise coming from the cam boxes.

I checked the oil pump we which we are going to fit in our VX project engine and I agree that the pump body showed very little wear. The relieve spring however is about 10% shorter than the spec (Lancia Technical bulletins)

We are busy scheduling for an overhaul on this engine and should know the real cause of this problem (going to be expensive) soon.

IMO the culprit is the spring and preferably we need new springs if pumps are not available – Alternatively may be dry sump will be the ultimate solution.

Regards,