Sitting at red light the other day and relized my oil guage was flickeing around zero or the red zone. I reved it up and it went up would max out at 30 when it would go near 50-60 before when i'd rev. Got home, checked oil level it it was FINE

what am I looking at here?
oil pump?
oil guage?



thanks

 

Always suspect the gauge first..

 

Does it sound or run any different than before? You can pull the valve cover and see very quickly when you fire it up if you have oil pressure. If it is zero at idle, there will be no oil flow at the rockers. The engine usually will sound unhappy, too.

Here's a novel tip. If you don't have oil pressure showing, don't assume it is the gauge and drive the car around. Find out for sure.

Troy
So Cal

 

go buy or borrow a mechanical gauge and hook it up on the engine and that will identify if its the gauge ...thats what i would do first then go from there

 

The engine sounds fine. No weird sounds or anything obvious atleast.

Another thing is that it only seems to have this problem after it warms up a bit. from a cold start oil pressure is fine,,, well i should say that the guage reads fine.

.... Just checked the valve covers (looking through the oil cap hole), and when the engine is running I can see a small trickle flowing through but no more than that, even when I rev it.

Is this normal?, I would think that it should of been spraying everywhere when I took that cap off.

 

well i got to my oil pressure sender right abouve my oil filter, and im pretty sure this is causing my problem. when i pulled the clip of it a few drips of oil came out which seemed strange,. dried it off and put it back, still reads low oil pressure. so i guess need a new sender unit.

the main piece spins around but wont unscrew, is this normal?

and if i unscrew the bolt it should come off right?

and is oil gonna pure all over me when this thing DOES come off?

 

Yeah when I replaced mine the main body would spin around. You can get a special socket that should fit around it. Mine failed high though (gauge was maxed out, not bottomed out).

 

Id say you have more problems than the sender. when you have the cover off and rev the motor you should get a mess of oil, not a trickle.

 

my motor does this too...brand new, no smoke at start up (when cold or warm) fires right up no problem with a press of the pedal once and the turn of the key (when cold) when warm it takes a couple cranks to start up....which I thought was kinda wierd.

regardless, no smoke, no horrible sounds, cept my lifters sound a bit louder....im scared!

 

My car was doing the exact same thing, it would go to zero, after check to make sure that i had oil, I replaced the sending unit, and that solved the problem. Good Luck.

 

thats next on my list...I HOPE TO *** the kinda ticking I hear is just my exhaust leak and its gotten worse, and not a lack of oil to my top end.....

I HOPE TO ***! that changing the sender (which leaks btw, I just went to look at it....had oil all over the plug) will fix this problem, and while I'm at it, might as well jack the car up and look for other leaks

lol

PRAY FOR IT!!

 

like mentioned above, before you go buying a new sending unit (because your NEW sending unit could end up being bad as well, you never know)... go buy a MECHANICAL gauge and read that, then you'll know for sure what your oil pressure is, and if your oil pressure sending unit is going bad.

Not to scare you, but the same exact thing happened to me when I spun some bearings, I'd read about the same oil pressure 0 at idle, 30 top with revs.

 

well I would IMAGINE that if I did in fact spin a bearing (which would be hard considering I baby this thing) then wouldn't the engine make some noise in the bottom end?

 

yes, it would knock... I believe the way it goes is a rod bearing will knock at low RPM, a spun main will knock faster as the RPMs raise.

 

either way, get a mechanical gauge, you can use it again for friends cars, beaters.... it's better to be safe than sorry, no? You could have some bad bearing clearances too that cause it, you never know.

 

MWAHAHAH JUST A GUAGE!!! MWAGHAHAHA....and my valve covers were leakin a lil bit causin my oil leaks....SO out goes my sending unit, in goes a plug!

cheers and thanks