Oil pressure issue....

BlackbirdSc94

Registered User
I was driving last night and went through a turn and the check gauges light came on and the fuel pressure needle was at 0 for a split second then it bounced back so I figured it was the combo of my slow oil leak getting low and the corner speed so I say Ill get some oil at the gas station.

About 5 minutes later I look down and instead of the needle being in on or inbetween the R and the M in normal it was down like one letter before the N in normal, which is not outside of the brackets or quite close for that matter. So after I get to a gas station and check the oil and its way low so I added 3 yes 3 quarts to it and start her up and the oil pressure is still where its at before, so I very gently drive home and park the car. I get up this morning to check and see if I have better luck, no such thing so I shut her down immediatly.


To my knowledge I thought these were go/no go switches and didnt relay any actual change outside of 1 thing so Im wondering what could have caused the needle to only go up about 60% of the normal reading.

Then about 2-3 hours later I say F it because I needed to go to the store and I figured it wasnt in the red area even though I belive the switch dosnt work like that, but im going to have to rebuild it anyway so whatever.

I get in the car and start her up and my pressures reading as it normally does so I find that weird but pleasing, luckly I didnt get my hopes up because after my 1 minute drive to the store I come back outside to go home and when I start the car its back on the left of the N in normal.

Now when this happend last night I had to drive about 5-10 miles maybe more to get to a gas station with decent oil during which I felt no power loss, no weird smells, no extra noises or vibrations made themselves apparent.

Im at a slight loss for ideas other than bad voltage ref signal or sensor and I only say that because I just had to swap out alternators, I think I might need a new battery but the car hasnt had any problems starting even after sitting for a while with my radio on (2k watt sub setup) and playing pretty loud she always fires up.

Someone please shed some light on my situiation. I think the cars refusing to act right because it was always garage kept and has never been driven in the winter and it just saw snow and salt for the first time a few days ago:(, now its going on a hunger strike till summer because itll probably be around spring before I get the money and time to get a motor rebuilt and swaped out
 
The stock oil pressure gauge is just an idiot light.

And while 3 quarts low is never a good thing, what it's doing may be separate from what's actually happening with oil pressure inside the engine.

The best way to proceed is to tap in a mechanical gauge and see what it says.
 
It could be the anti-slosh board acting up (after all, that's what drives the "Check Gauges" light, and oil / water temp / volts are sampled, fuel level is fed through it).

If you didn't want the mechanical gauge, a quick work around can be found in the (rather longish, starts on the 4.6 V8!) thread at TCCoA - http://forums.tccoa.com/showthread.php?t=75977 (Yes, they cover a 3.8SC later in the thread!)

But as long as the gauge isn't at "0", and the light isn't on for "Check Gauges", you're good, no matter WHAT it's at.

RwP
 
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