Oil pressure wars; the saga continues

Well I swapped out the relief valve springs... I removed the EMPI
spring in the rear valve (dual relief case) and the 1 of the other
springs I had felt (by gosh by golly method) to be about half way
between the stock spring and the EMPI after market one so I put it in.

None of the springs I had were even close the right length for front
relief valve (I tossed the bad stock spring) but the piston was about
1/4" longer than the rear valve so I replaced it with a shorter piston.
I figured I could cut 1 turn off this spring later if the pressure was
still too high.

I replaced the damaged mechanical oil pressure gage this morning.
Anyway this evening, I primed the oil filter, spun it on and cranked it
down, checked & topped up the oil level. It was now or never... I fired
it up, ran it for about a minute and waited for the oil pressure to come
up and no farging pressure. I killed the engine, checked everything and
ran it for another 30 seconds. Still no farging oil pressure. I'm
about ready to flip out and while going over ever thing I notice the new
oil pressure gage has the needle on the wrong side of the stopper pin.
Good grief, I can't seem to win on this. Anyway I'm getting closer.

I know it's no longer blowing oil filters but I'm clueless about how
much pressure it's running. To make things worse, it was vandalized
again, this time some ******* burnt a spot on one of the new hoses to
the oil filter. I'll take the oil pressure gage back tomorrow and get it
replaced and buy a new chunk of oil hose. I'm pretty sure it's alright
but I'm not going to drive it until I know what it's doing.

I'm stressing out about this and I'm thinking hard about stuffing it
back in my brother in-law's barn for anther 6 years...

Tony