well, one more problem with my car. its a '88 gta with a 5.7 and a digital dash setup. all the guages work except for my oil pressure guage. i go to start up the car and the guage goes up past 60. i have enough oil, and the engine doesnt blow blue smoke so i dont think im burning anything. at idle the car doesnt make any noticible noise except for a squeeling a/c compressor and one injector ticks. im fairly new to the digital dash and am lost on electronics, so any advice and tips would be much appreciated.

thanks in advance

 

Hey there,

I myself have an 87" GTA with the digital dash option, and quite possibly being my favorite feature of the WHOLE car, it freaked me out severely when my oil pressure guage stopped working.

My problem turned out to be a bad sending unit, the guage still worked, was just the part on the engine that went bad (Go Figure)

Now, my car does EXACTLY what yours does, when I start the car, the guage goes past 60, and comes back down every now and then when im at idle or something, so its working as it should.

Your guage is working just fine

 

If it stays up past 60 and doesn't go down, the sending unit is bad. Have somebody ground the sensor wire. The gauge should go to zero. If it does, replace the sender.

 

Maybe his oil pressure is above 60 as long as the engine is running?

My car does the EXACT same thing, and the guage itself works perfectly fine because I sat there and watched my mechanic hook up a Diagnostics computer to make sure it was ok, and by god, the pressure was over 60, guage working A-OK,

And whenever my oil pressure decides to come down just a little bit like when im at a stoplight or at idle, my little light by 60" on the pressure guage lights up every now and then, but dissapears when I get going on.

The digital dash has a light that indicates the pressure/volts/temp, and in this case, the pressure is higher then 60, and since the guage only goes to 60, theres no light to light up past it, so in all there is no light.

 

Unless he has a modified engine it wont be pushing 60 psi at hot idle.

 

well, the most done to it is a afpr and headers and runners. everything else is stock. it goes up to to 60, disappears, then if i rev the engine it drops back down again. ive only run the car in the garage as i haven't gotten a chance to take it out yet. i will try gounding it and seeing what the sensor does. i just thought it was odd that it runs at 60 psi and was wondering if thats normal.

 

Ancient thread I know.

My digital oil pressure gauge would only display on the scale when the engine was warm and at idle. As soon as I hit the gas, it would go off the scale.

Replaced the sender unit today. Now working properly, with a pretty steady 45 psi. I've heard from various people that their gauge does what mine did, and some people thought it was just normal. But the new sender will fix it. It was just a minor annoyance that it went off the scale, but now it's fixed. Funny how such a small thing can make your day.

 

What sender did you use (manufacturer)? I had the same problem FOR YEARS. I changed the sensor in 2018 and it didn't change anything... RockAuto seems to carry just Standard and WVE...

 

I bought an AC Delco D1829. My car's indicator was off the scale since I bought it over three years ago. It had exactly one ride about a year ago where the indicator stayed on the scale and I thought that maybe somehow it fixed itself. But it was back off the scale the next ride. Now when I start the car the indicator is quickly at 45 psi. and rarely budges while I'm driving.

My only digital dash issue now is with the tach. It works fine most of the time. But on hot days, the graph will slowly climb the scale until the whole thing is lighted. When you rev the engine, it climbs, but then doesn't go all the way back down, and gets higher and higher. In cooler weather, it's fine. On hot days, if you have the A/C on, it works fine. Or if you put the A/C on after the display is messed up, it will slowly go back to normal. Maybe a missing or ineffective piece of heat shielding back there.