I'm going to install a mechanical oil gauge soon and I want to run a tee off the block so I can hook up the stock sender for the oil light and a stainless braided cable for the gauge. Where would I shop for fittings like that please? Does anyone know the size offhand?

Also I've been looking online at connections and a few sites claim the 4 cylinders vibrate so much that the fittings eventually break. One site showed a line like a brake line that came off the block with a 360 degree loop for a vibration dampner with the fittings and cable hooked up to it. Do you think that's necessary? Someone told me the turbo guys use the tee and I wondered if they ever had one break from vibration.

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the imput I receive here.

One last thing: Do the gauge and braided cable need to be completely primed and free of air before the connection is made at the block?

Originally posted by Nemo
I'm going to install a mechanical oil gauge soon and I want to run a tee off the block so I can hook up the stock sender for the oil light and a stainless braided cable for the gauge. Where would I shop for fittings like that please?

You can go to a hardware store or a home depot / lowes. Check out the turbo article by gsgoinfast here:

http://www.2gnt.com/index.php?d=GSGoinFast%20Turbosystem

Step 4 he describes the oil line setup, you would use basically the same thing for an oil pressure gauge except instead of going to a turbo it's going to your gauge

Also, as he mentions, you can bring your stock sender along with the oil line you're going to be using with you to the store and just play around with pieces until you figure out what exactly you need

Originally posted by Nemo
Also I've been looking online at connections and a few sites claim the 4 cylinders vibrate so much that the fittings eventually break. One site showed a line like a brake line that came off the block with a 360 degree loop for a vibration dampner with the fittings and cable hooked up to it. Do you think that's necessary?

I've honestly never heard of anybody here having that problem and I'd say 99% of the turbo people on here tee off the back of their block by the oil pressure sending unit.

Originally posted by Nemo
One last thing: Do the gauge and braided cable need to be completely primed and free of air before the connection is made at the block?

I'll leave this one up to someone else

Edit: Also this is more of a performance/engine question, moving to the appropriate forum

The stock pressure sensor is 3/8" npt. What I did was installed this adapter fitting into the block that reduces 3/8"npt to -4an: (Aeroquip FBM-2511) .

From there I ran -4an hose to this tee fitting that, using a coupler, accepts the stock sensor: (Aeroquip FBM-2705) (Russell 661461) .

More -4an hose from that tee to this tee for my pressure gauge: (Aeroquip FBM-2818) .

Lastly, I capped off the end, and zip tied the setup to the intake manifold support. I am planning turbo, and wanted to be able to easily run the line in the future. I found all of the pieces at Summit.

Thanks also for your time and the pics. That was a really straight forward post. Easy to understand. Appreciated.

Thank you CS. That picture on step four was worth a thousand words. I appreciate your help and time.

Originally posted by Nemo
One last thing: Do the gauge and braided cable need to be completely primed and free of air before the connection is made at the block?

no don't worry about it too much.
you can try if you want but it wont make much of a difference in the readings on the gauge.
you may see +- 1-2 psi due to the air (and its also determined by the total length of tubing anyway) and generally commercially avaliable gauges are acutate to about that much anyway.
(i can puff out the math later if you truly need to know gas compression due to fluids :P )

your primarily looking for overall trends anyway. if somthing is wrong with the lubrication pressure to the CHRA, trust me it wont be reading light or heavy by 1-2 psi. you will be <15 for a leak or pump failure and much higher if your system has a clog or obstruction

Thanks, and no, lol, no need to puff out the math. Thanks for the explanation, Foggy. Yes, the gauge is for trends-well stated!

All the stuff for my oil pressure gauge was bought at Home Depot, the only little piece that I had to buy at NAPA was a little adapter from one size to the other.