It ussually has between 35-40 but yesterday i changed the valve cover gaskets and today it droped down to the red. Anybody have any idea what might have happened

 

wire fell off the sender or the valve cover leaks and you lost all your oil

 

EDIT* damn ede beat me

 

thanks, I iknow its full of oil, where is the sender located?

 

above the oil filter

 

In a 82 car, it's behind the distributor.... a silver can about 1½" diameter and about 2" long with a slide terminal.... dark blue wire with a large black rubber boot goes on it

 

Is there 3 wires on the conector?

 

If it's CFI, maybe, I don't know for sure. If it's carb, no.

If you have a loose connector, try plugging it in and see if the gauge starts working.

 

If it was a CFI car, yes there are 3 wires leading to it. A combined pressure switch/sending unit.

 

Well only the center wire is left on the conector, it looks like the others had been cut off, and i couldnt find the rest of it. After i messed around a little while the guage started floting between 0 and 20. It used to have the crossfire but it had been swaped to a 71 LT1 350 by the previus owner. What will the lack of the 2 ouside wires do?, cause its been running fine with out them before.

 

The other 2 wires most likey are the wires that control the fuel pump relay. The remaining wire is the wire for the gauge. My car had the exact same issue. 2 of the 3 wires were cut.

 

if you poke around, you'll probly find that the two cut wires are twisted together....

its so that the fuel pump cuts off when oil pressure falls... except the switch fails and then the car wont run.

in the dark ages before the general public understood EFI and electronics (read: 80s) people bypassed stuff like that alot to "fix" things.