Tag Archives: low oil pressure

What does low oil pressure mean on your heavy equipment?

A lot of care needs to be taken when it comes to construction equipments as it is often considered to be the backbone of the industry in any jobsite. If your heavy equipments cease to work your entire project comes to a standstill and a construction company will never want that to happen. This is the reason why they must ensure that the overall health of the heavy equipment is in order. Now something that plays a crucial role in determining the good health of heavy equipment is the lubricant that is used on it. The machine will perform smoothly as long as the lubricants are doing their job but one also needs to ensure to change the oil which if not done can cause immense problem to the machine to perform. This can simply not be ignored and if done then the owner should be ready to bear exponential cost to get the machine fixed.

In most of the modern day heavy equipment that all construction companies and contractors possess have something known as “oil pressure warning light” installed in the machine which will flicker the moment the machine comprehends a problem that is causing due to low oil pressure. They can also get a low oil pressure reading on the dash gauge which also acts as a warning indicating a problem is expected to arrive at your doorstep. The owner/operator should not take this warning lightly. Action needs to be taken immediately. However, it has been observed that people tend to neglect and ignore such warnings which later become the reason of the non-functioning of the machine. Since normal wear increases the engine bearing clearances, engines are bound to lose a certain degree of oil pressure. But when you indentify low oil pressure in an engine you should take it as an indication that there is something really wrong which if not worked on can throw up severe consequences.

One also needs to understand what causes low oil pressure. It is often caused due to worn main and rod bearings. The oil pump produced flow and any sort of resistance to this flow causes low pressure. So who causes resistance? It is the orifices in the engine block that causes the resistance. The oil flows through the engine block and between the bearings and crankshaft journals. So when the bearings wear it just increases the flow of oil which ultimately results in low pressure. Other parts of the machine such as the overhead cam engines can also suffer due to low oil pressure. Increase in the bearing clearance can also lead to noisy engine and pounding which should be enough indication for the owner to act immediately on the machine or be ready to shell out good chunk of money to fix the problem.

Other than rod bearing if there is an excessive flow of oil through any other means is also a cause of worry. This can obviously not be checked every now and then and which is why the best option is to get the problem resolved at the first stance when you see the oil pressure warning light flickering.

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