I would suggest pulling the filter adapter again and inspect the plunger. Something odd here. Your gauge maxed out, you replaced the sender and did the pressure mod, you had good pressure, then lost it. If you lost pressure then you may have taken out the bearings. Inspect first. Very odd that yours is doing the same thing as mine. Starts off with good pressure, then slowly drops off.

That'* why I thought at first it was the sender again, but I guess not. One thing that came to mind, is 70lbs of oil pressure at 1000 RPM just too much? Hopefully that didn't wash out a bearing or something.

Tomorrow I'm going to have the car towed home, Trent is stopping up with some gasket remover and hopefully a better scraping tool and a new gasket. I'm going to remove the washer and reassemble everything. If it works, I'll be happy. If not, I'll leave it in the garage and head down to pick up my truck until I figure out what to do with the car.

70 might be a bit high, I would expect closer to 60 psi with the mod. But 70 shouldn't have washed out the bearings.

My aeroforce was showing a very consistent 68, hardly moved at all no matter what the RPMs for the first 10 minutes or so of the drive. Hopefully the 3-4 minutes of chatter it endured this morning didn't do too much harm.

Cross your fingers and I'm sure I'll be letting you know it'* fate late tomorrow night.

It should move based on RPM. Noise is never good.. but we can hope. As for starting out cold with good pressure, then dropping. That'* a common bearing wear, when the bearing isn't totally spun out of place it'll still provide some restriction. Once the oil warms and thins though.. it'* showtime.

It really does sound like what mine is doing. Have you looked at your oil real real close? Do you see any metal flakes in the oil?

I haven't paid REAL close attention, I've got a magnetic oil plug and it usually has a paper thin layer of sludge on it when I do an oil change. I'll take a better look when I drain the oil tonight.

cut the filter open and look at the media, that will be a good indication as well.

Sounds like if I drain the oil and see flakes I may as well just stop and plan on doing a "remove oil plug, insert new engine, reinstall oil plug".

I'm starting to think your in the same boat as me. A worn bearing, but not spun. It may be hard to see the flakes. Put some on your clean finger and look in the sun light. You should see very small flakes.

On the plus side, you have another truck to drive. You need a good rotating block, then transfer your parts over. If you need to do heads, it'* about $300. Would be a good time to drop in a cam. Engine out, nice and easy.