2009 Ultra, had 255s put in this spring about 3,000 miles since then. Everything is working well, get to my girlfriends house, shut off the bike, come back out 10 minutes later, we go to leave, I start the bike and notice the oil pressure is not registering at all...always sits low at idle so pull out of driveway...notice the red oil light and shut it down and coast back to driveway.

Check the oil....have plenty....start it again...same situation....immediately shut it down.

A bazillion threads on low pressure etc.....but found NONE after searching about 300 about ZERO oil pressure. I know it's time to tear it apart...first place to look is obviously oil pump....is it common for them to just go completely out? Replace with Harley? Anything better out there to use? Anything else I should do to it while I'm in there again?

Insight and inputs appreciated!

 

Sorry....meant to advise just shy of 30,000 total miles on the bike.

Thanks,

 

Bad oil pressure sending unit?

Years ago I went over to a friends house and he had a cherry picker set up to pull the engine out of his pickup. He explained that he was driving down the highway when his oil pressure gauge dropped to zero. I asked if the engine had made much noise, rod-knock, main bearing noise or clattering hydraulic lifters... no it hadn't. My suggestion was to change the sending unit first. Bingo! He had plenty of oil pressure but his gauge couldn't read it!

Ed

 

Yep, check sending unit BEFORE oil pump...

Just makes sense, ya know?

 

did you change the oil pump, cam plate, inner bearings when you changed the cams? May have lost a roller bearing in the inner bearings or lifter and it jacked the oil pump...Don't know if this will help, but change the oil filter first and see if it might be restricted. Don't know if that would cause no oil pressure or not but it's an easy check to start with...

DITTO on the sending unit also..

 

I agree.... sending unit. If you have zero oil pressure, your engine will tell you with the noise the lifters will make. It only take a few seconds of no oil pressure for them to start CLACKING.

 

In regards to some of the responses, does the idiot light come on if the sending unit go's bad? If so, what the hell good does it do to have two separate systems for oil pressure if they run on the same sending unit?

Now I'm curious

 

I went into my service manual ('07 Ultra) and if I'm reading it right (BIG if) there is only one sending unit. I think the reason that there's an idiot light is that some people aren't compulsive gauge watchers like we are and need a red light to tell them something is wrong.

Ed

 

Thanks guys....seemed to be noisier, and when I went to restart it seemed like it turned over much harder and clattered when I started it back up briefly.....but that could have been my paranoia.

Plan to go to Oreilly and borrow a mechanical oil pressure gauge....figured I'd pull the spark plugs and dump a little oil down the cylinders in case it had already started starving...fire it back up and see what the mechanical gauge was telling me.

Don't think it's the sending unit, but cannot find anything in the service manual that shows how it can be checked.

"did you change the oil pump, cam plate, inner bearings when you changed the cams?"

Nope. Guess I should have searched more here at the time I did that for recommendations....live and learn.

Good idea on the oil filter...I'll pull it and change it to just to be safe.

+1 on the gauge and idiot light being on the same sending unit and circuit...I thought the exact same thing....don't make sense to me but from my research...it certainly appears to be that way.

Thanks for thoughts so far....certainly open to additional input.

 

Don't dump oil into the cylinders...

You may cause more problems than you have now. Too much compression will force the pressure to seek an escape. Oil does not compress. It may actually break a piston, rod, or cut a hole down the side of it. I've seen these things happen...