My L03 only has about 190,000 miles on it. A few months ago I was driving it and my oil pressure took a dump into red a block away form home, and generally it's measuring a lot lower than it did the day before.

It was deep in the red when I parked it last. I didnt feel like going through the trouble of checking on whether itw as the gauge/sender because I was under hte impression that when the sender goes bad, the gauge will usually just drop to zero. A little more research seems to indicate that the sender will do all sorts of odd things when it goes bad and the fact that I still get a reading that seems to correlate with my engine temperature doesn't necessarily mean it's good. It reads 40 when cold, in the red when warm as opposed to 60 when cold and 30 when warm every other time I ever drove it.

I read some posts on here, and several of them made comments like "If your oil pressure was really below 20 PSI when warm, you'd know it from the way the engine sounds". Is this necessarily true? Because my car ran and sounded fine when I parked it last...

Im thinking about going to grab a mechanical gauge from the store within the next few days, but where's the easiest place to attach it?

 

Yes, it's true. Not sure about "necessarily"; but if something all of a sudden happened to your motor that REALLY caused the oil pressure to go away all of a sudden, you'd know it. Believe that.

Screw a mechanical gauge. That's almost like WORK. Moreover, it's the very worst kind: EXTRA work. Blasphemy and heresy.

What will happen is, you will go to all the trouble and expense and hacking to hook it up, and you will discover that your stock gauge system has failed, like they always do. Then, you will troubleshoot the stock gauge sysem, and discover that the faulty part is the sending unit, like it always is. Then, you will have to go and buy a sending unit like everybody else always has to, and change it out.

Now... explain how installing a mecahnical gauge is a shortcut or otherwise of value, either in money, time, or effort, as compared to just buying the sending unit in the first place, and swapping it (about a 3 minute job if you stop twice for cold ones and savor them both carefully, or less if you wait until you're done for the refreshment), and moving on.

 

I didnt want to buy a new sending unit if the old one is bad. Figured a mechanical gauge might come in handy. But hell, I guess you're right.

 

For anyone who does a search:

It was the sending unit. I parked the car for 3 months over a $16 sending unit. It's cheaper than a mechanical gauge too. Im a little annoyed, but it's hard to be too upset when it turns out your motor runs fine.

It lasted 190,000 miles, and was leaking also. I should have figured it out a lot sooner.

 

Glad it's resolved!