You all know I'll beg to differ . A guage will tell of imminent danger quicker than any of my senses. Mine sits on 45 lb at 2500rpm + and 20 lb at idle hot. I once had a problem with a forine body in the oil tank blocking flow but only after about 10 minutes running (warm up lap) down to zero. Stop engine for a minute and restart with full pressure. Certainly would have blown her without a guage.
Cheers
Muskie, this is very very similar to an incident I had. Thank God I had a gauge!
I checked all the way from the tank to the pump inlet to find out what was adversely affecting suction since it was clearly a suction problem (having run 2 oil pressure gauges in parallel to confirm that it wasn't the gauge playing up) and didn't find a thing. I changed the oil pipe from the tank to the engine inlet but I then narrowed it down to inside the oil tank and tried various ways of poking things down the suction pipe in the tank e.g. wire and cable ties, and things went back to normal pressure.
I can't think what could have got past the suction filter mesh in the oil tank unless it was congealed oil sludge inside the suction tube. I even run with a return line filter.
Pipe dreaming if I had a spare tank I'd be tempted to change the suction tube inside the tank to a larger bore to make it less likely to restrict suction. Meanwhile, I check the oil pressure gauge frequently, especially in the first mile or two to check that all is well.
Our experience makes you wonder how often engine failure is caused by suction problems without anyone knowing since if this has happened to us statistically it must have happened many times to others without an oil pressure gauge to explain why.
Yes, I'm an oil pressure gauge fan.