Oil Pressure after fitting Christen System

[MartinFleet]

Can anyone offer advice on an inverted oil system oil pressure conundrum please?

I recently purchased a new Christen tank and a second hand valve. I first fitted the tank and test flew, noting that oil pressure at idle was about 40psi, and at takeoff revs was somewhere off the top of the guage, but probably about 115psi (guage goes to 100psi).

I then fitted the inverted valve, and idle had come up a little to about 50psi but ground running at 2500 gave only about 60psi. I put about four turns on the pressure relief valve adjuster to bring the idle up to about 65psi and the 2500rpm pressure up to about 75-80 psi. This seems a little low to me.

Can anybody offer any insight as to why fitting the Christen valve has narrowed the oil pressure range quite so much?

[MartinFleet]

Sorry - forgot to mention - this is on an RV-8 with a Superior IO-360 B1AAB.

[rv8or]

Not on oil pressure but something else to watch for.
The metal Tee piece on the breather lines acts as a condenser and drops water droplets down to the top pickup of the oil shuttle valve.
It can fill that line with water.

The above is from personal experience.

Rob

[MartinFleet]

Thanks Rob, but my system doesn't make use of the T piece - The breather is connected to the tank, and the top port on the valve is connected to a blanking plate on the vacuum pump drive. I've been advised that this configuration gives both superior inverted oil pickup and negates the need for a periodically draining condensation out of the oil.