Technical Heres one for you........

[Pilp]

Hi all, now then last weekend i parked my X up in my workshop after a day out working fine. Fired it up tonight and have no oil presure, took the feed for the presure gauge of, fired it up no oil flow.
This is on a 2ltr twincam, not a standard engine, but an engine is an engine......so, oil pump failure? or drained back and needs repriming? Oil filter is full, oil on dipstick is fine.
Opinions please guys

 

[Pilp]

Well, problem solved, it appears it was drain back. Took the pipe from the remote filter to engine off, poured some oil into it, refitted it, fired up and straight away had normal oil presure. Just need to understand why it happened now

 

[jimbro1000]

Normally (and I stress this bit) you don't get this happening unless the oil pump has run dry of oil and can no longer create the suction it needs to lift oil out of the sump.

I've never come across it on a Fiat but it is a huge problem with my TVR - when doing an oil change you have to be quick. If you leave it any length of time the only option is to remove the oil pump and pack it with a thin grease. Thankfully the oil pump is pretty easy to get to but if it happened on a Fiat it would be a nightmare. The only saving grace on an X1/9 is you wouldn't have to remove the exhaust system to take the sump off. The later FIRE engines all had the exhaust wrapping around under the sump with obvious consequences.

 

[Pilp]

Its certainly a strange one, fortunatley all fine now having back fed the pipe to the engine with a small amount of oil (remote filter and oil cooler)
Im just at a loss as to why standing for a week would cause it to happen in the first place!
Perhaps the oil pump is on the way out, time will tell on that one i guess.