For the love of orange.
I have been chasing this low oil pressure problem since I did the oil pan and pump gaskets. Made no sense. Run it for few miles at idle low oil light comes on. Little rpm goes away. It was running lower oil pressure than normal as well.
Shut machine off cut a tree come back oil pressure good. I switched from Napa gold to fram for the orange. Dad always used them as a kid sold everywhere what could be the issue.
Looked back at my thread and said this is the only change. Lots of internet rabbit holes but eventually I found people with a similar issue switching to fram.
Got the cat hot tonight and oil pressured at idle was low. Put the Napa gold back on while hot got hot again problem solved.
Here’s the cut away. What a cheap setup. Cardboard cartridge is deformed. Napa/wix uses metal. Drain back flap deformed as well.
Ghetto leaf spring bypass valve with plastic vs metal spring. Same on me.
My guess is a good flow of oil in the cold deforms these. Fram has a pdf on how to determine if your filter collapses?
Pressure gauge is on the filter return after filtering so my guess false low read.
They out the WTF in Fram. Shame on me!
Problem solved!