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oil pressure, uneven running..



My 74 spider has been parked (under a car cover) for about 4 or 5 weeks
roughly, possibly closer to 6/8. Anyway, I decided she needed to go for an
outing and took her to run an errand and planned on using her this evening
to do some driving and give her a good bit of exercise.

Normally, the engine just purrs nice and smooth at idle, no problems to
speek of. Today she was running just a bit rough. Not terribly noticeable,
but enough that the car shook with the rough idle at stop lights, and that
was noticeable. I figured she just needed a good ITU.

Also, and I didn't notice this so much going (when the engine was cold),
but on the return trip with a hot engine I noticed the low oil pressure
light coming on SOLID at idle. When I first got the car the oil light
would flicker dimly occasionally at idle, but this went totally away when
I replaced the PO's 10w30 with 20w50. From then until now the car has had
good oil pressure even when the engine nice and hot.

Today, even with the engine pushing 3000+ rpm the oil pressure guage
didn't go over the half mark (57?), normally running down the freeway the
oil pressure would be just a little over that, and at idle at a stop sign
it would drop down a bit more. Now, it barely gets to a third (my guess
would be ~35) of the way up the guage.

When I started, I checked the oil and she was full. I parked exactly where
I was before, and will check the oil in a bit. I've also noticed that if I
run the engine, and then stop it and immediately check the oil, it looks
like I am low. If I wait just a few minutes (~5) and check again, the oil
is back to normal.

OK, now to the questions:

1> The rough idle I'm assuming (and hoping) will be my points needing an
adjustment as something similar happened after it was driven from CA to
TX.
2> The oil pressure has me worried. I'm going to change the oil at first
opportunity, and possibly run a flush through, and check it with fresh oil
since this oil is about the time to be changed.
3> Is it normal to need to wait a few minutes after turning the engine off
to get a really good and accurate reading on the dipstick? The difference
between checking immediately after turning the engine off and about 5
minutes later can be a quart to a quart and a half.
4> Are there any other tips/advice/things to check that I might not have
covered here?

Many thanks,
Greg
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