yes I can tell you, it is ruined, the capillary tube is charged with a gas and once you let it out it is no good. My recommendation is to find an original replacement, I could not get a good new one, I changed mine 3 times before I finally got a 60 year old gauge from Pre-68 dave and it works just fine. The ones that say counterpart on them aren't worth taking home, because unless I had the worst luck in the world the first one didn't move off the peg, which was very disconcerting because this is the gauge I was relying on to monitor my freshly rebuilt $5000 engine on its first firing, so my 20 minute break-in was somewhat nerve wracking. The second one I got smart and tested it in a pan of boiling water, a big thumbs up there, ah I was set. I tried to replace it without taking the gage panel completely out but it wouldn't go in the hole, but with perserverance I got it mounted and when I turned it around I came to my attention the bourdon tube was so big it hit the little reflector thing in the gage panel, and made the needle stick straight up in the air. The third one worked in a somewhat manner, but only had one pivot point and as soon as you put it in hot water it would pull the needle right down into the face of the gage and then eventually it would snap up and register correctly, but for $80 I couldn't do it. While I had things apart, I noticed my brand new $80 counterpart brand oil pressure gage was leaking from the solder joint on the bourdon tube, the reason I noticed is when I pulled the gage panel out, I got a face full of oil, and it had only been used about 3 hours total. That has been my experience with counterpart gages. Which as far as I know, although they may have different names on the box they all come from the same place. Wherever that is......
