Blew a seal, lost oil pressure, I'm pissed!

[Dr. Righteous]

OK,
Was fixing nick-nack things under the hood of my '85 Ramcharger. Was playing with the vacuum advance and hook the stock electrical oil pressure gauge back up. Took it for a spin. Ran good then a mile or so from the house I start to hear a loud clattering that sounded like a loose valve train. I looked down at the oil pressure gauge and it was dropping fast! I wasn't far from the house so I limped it home. I still had oil pressure when I stopped the truck. I smelled burning oil very strongly and noticed oil all over the place under the truck. It was dripping from the oil filter. Just previously I tightened the thing up to stop a slow oil leak. IT LOOKS LIKE the adaptor seal let go and it dumped all my oil out. It was still dumping oil until I killed the engine so I had some oil under pressure. I will check out the leak and see what happened.
What does it sound like to you guys? Any danger to my mains/rod bearings? Had pressure, but it look like 10-20 lbs. It is usually 25-30 lbs at idle. IF I fix the leak and my oil pressure isn't back to normal I am going to be some kind of pissed!! This engine has just over 1000 miles on it.

P.S.
This is the 360\4bbl engine I built.
I could not have been happier with the way it performed so far, I was in the process of tweaking it for best power/mileage then disaster stuck.

[E Strong]

I'm no expert, but I did see this happen once. My brother had just changed the oil in his New Yorker and was coming out of his driveway as I arrived (good thing). I flaged him down because there was a large stream of oil coming out under his car. Turned out that the rubber seal from the old filter had stuck to the engine. when he started to drive the pressure blew oil between the two seals. Since you said it was coming from the filter, I would have a look at it first. Hope this helps. good luck!

[PRO]

Ultimately Doc you may have a stuck pressure relief spring in the oil pump due to debris or?which over presurized the oil filter and downloaded most of your oil.Unless your oil filter adapter wasnt tight to the block that'd be my guess........PRO......

[Dr. Righteous]

The gasket and adaptor went back together correctly when I was building the engine. I knew that would be a prime place for leaks because it was stright off a high volume pump. The pump produces 80-90 lbs at cold idle and 20-30 lbs when hot. That is with 10-30W oil. What would a stuck bypass spring read??
I will have a chance to check it out after work today. I hope it isn't serious.

[mgoudas]

I had a similar problem with my mothers car when the relief spring in the pump broke and proceded to blow two filters up, (I thought the first was defective) dont know what the presure was but it had to be a lot to blow a filter up.

Good Luck

[PRO]

A stuck by pass spring usually reads 0 psi,you may just want to crank it with the filter off and the plugs out(no compression and very little load on the bearing)and see if it pumps any oil,with a stuck spring it wont pump any oil..........PRO.....

[440Ramcharger]

Once apon a time. There was an elk hunt......
A few days before my elk hunt, I had a tranny rebuild on my 1983 Ramcharger with a 440 and 727 Torqueflite. After the tranny rebuild a motor mount was broken. I was unaware of this condition. The broken mount let the sway bar rub on the oil filter. Thursday comes. We pack up the trailer with the tent, food, beverages, generator etc. This is somewhere around 1995 or so unit 5b as I recall. I hook up the trailer to my Ramcharger to head north. The .300 Win mag was sighted in, and the tag was in my pocket.
Dale, driving a 2wd 454 Chevy crew cab dually remembers his son's 440 Dodge Charger with the six pack. He motions me to take the lead (saving humilition?). The drive to the area we were drawn in was upwards of 2 hours. No issues going up. Once there we hunted Friday (opening day) in falling snow, continuous falling snow. No one fired a shot on that Friday morning. Afternoon came. All headed out with more clothes than the morning hunt. Still no shots. Saturday morning came. I woke with the tent sagging bearly two inches above my nose as I lay in my cot. I pushed against the tent, it did not budge. I pushed harder. Harder Swoooosh!!
6 inches of snow slides off of the tent top. Ohhh $hhhht!! Outside of the tent was a total white out. The blanket of snow turned to 16 or so inches.
It was TOTAL white no matter what direction you faced. The storm was so bad a 16 year old boy got lost and froze to death. We packed as fast as rabbits running across the yard. I fired up the Ramcharger to let her warm up as I packed to get the heck off of the rim. I checked the guages after a couple minutes or so and noticed that there was NO oil pressure. $hoot!! Shut her down and check the stick! No oil. Add 3 quarts and it is reading on the stick again (still not realizing what has happened). Fire her up to get the heater going. Go back to packing. Check the guages again in 5 or so minutes and No oil pressure!!. Shut her down
again. Add some oil that Dale had. Look under the vehicle and notice that there is a hole burned into the snow. Under closer inspection, there was a motor mount that was broken and the sway bar rubbed a hole in the oil filter. No one had an extra PH8A or PH43 oil filter or duct tape. Anyway to make a short story long, I drove the Ramcharger in 4 wheel drive low lock pushing snow with a trailer and gear until the oil guage dropped to near L and the engine got tight. Shut her down, added oil. Did this 3 times. Finally got a filter and oil from a garage in Christoper Creek. Dropped the sway bar and did a filter change. Added oil. I figured I blew the motor. She fired up and ran nearly the same pressure as before that fateful trip. I ran that motor another 4 years without another thing done to it. The best part of the trip was watching a 4x4 Dakota pull Dale's Chevy out to solid ground. Don't panic. You had oil pressure when you shut her down.

[Dr. Righteous]

It was the adaptor gasket. I had to run all over town but I got a Felpro adaptor gasket that was fiber and very thick compared to the one that was in the gasket kit I used. I got the filter off and inspected the seal. It looked good. I took the adaptor off and eyeballed that really close. It looked fine. Then I looked up and checked out the gasket. It was all out of shape! This one was a thin, 'rubbery' gasket and under pressure it warped. I yanked it out and cleaned up the mating surfaces. I put in the thick fiber gasket and bolted everything back together. Draining the oil from the pain it looks like I only had a quart left in it. I refilled the engine and cranked her up. The oil pressure came back, no leaks, sounded normal. It's all good!