I have a 1989 dodge ram TBI 318 122000 miles and it has about 25-30 pounds of oil pressure down the road hot, I'm worried about it cause my 83, and 79 with 318 have 40-45, when I first bough the pickup the gauge said about 35-42 pounds and the pressure switch, was leaking badly, so I switched it with a new one and I'm just curiouser what other 89's had cause I heard they were a little lower then the older 318's.

 

Are you using a mechanical gauge or using the stock gauge? If you are basing these readings on the factory gauge don't trust it as they are notoriously inaccurate.

 

Mine has 40-50 PSI hot under power with a mechanical gauge and I agree with sls001. 30-80 PSI is good at 2000 RPMs and a minimum of 8 at idle.

 

It has the factory gauge on it, that's why I was curious, I need to put mechanical gauges on all of them, Thank you for your comments and advice.

 

I don't know what the range is on the factory gauge, but mine usually sits within a dash of the middle, give or take. I've found my truck really hates fram oil filters. I can't seem to hold more than about 1/4 of the gauge with them, so I gave up, and went back to the non-grippy and non-fram varieties of filters. Fram makes a few other brands for oems and chain stores I think, so you have to watch out for that if you want to go that route.

 

my stock gauge says i have fairly low pressure even when i doing 80mph. now the gauges in the 91-93 i know seem to register a bit higher. i don't know what year they dumped the gauge voltage regulator. that might effect it.

 

Thanks for the picture crazzywolfie, my 89 sits a little bit below that, I'll try a different oil filter as well, I believe If I remember correctly, the middle line of the oil pressure gauge is 40 pounds, the first big line on the left is 20 and the last big line on the right is 60.

 

My in truck gauge is the same as the one pictured and mine sits just below CWs. The in truck gauges are good for reference only once you use a mechanical gauge to find out what the factory gauge is actually saying.

 

under normal operating conditions i think mine also sits a bit lower once it has hit operating temperature. that picture just show how bad inaccurate the gauges are. i figure at 80mph it should have been sitting higher.

 

I couldn't read that crappy factory gauge either. So I got a mechanical gauge hooked to mine and it's a fairly recent rebuild. It is a V6 so don't know if the pressure is supposed to be different. However, I noticed today that I'm showing 65 psi at startup, 60 at hwy speed, and at stoplight it shows 22. I used to worry about it dropping to 22 psi until I read what others show at idle after warmup. Probably the moral of the story is get ahold of a mech. gauge and stop the guesswork.