zx3focus

I have searched and read a fair amount about lsx oil pressure sending units but nothing matches what happened to mine. The car didn't run for about 7 months while it was down for the turbo setup. Since it has been running again the oil pressure gauge on the dash has been reading lower and lower until one night it got so low, around 10psi at idle, around 200 degree oil temps at the time. I double checked the oil pressure a the factory temp sensor port with a mechanical gauge and this verified that the motor was seeing about 35psi at idle and it quickly came up to 60 with a rev to 4500 rpm or so. The gauge on the dash won't ever read above 20ish psi under any circumstance, rpm or oil temp doesn't matter. I replaced the sending unit with one from the parts store but it behaved identically. I was told there was a screen under the sending unit that sometimes got clogged and could cause a restriction to the sending unit, I went to pull mine out but it had already been removed. I checked the voltage at the harness with the sensor unplugged, key on, engine off, it reads 5v. I have read that it could be a worn bearing but the motor doesn't make any odd noises and like I said before the mechanical gauge reads fine. Is it possible that it could be seeing pressure down at the temp sensor port but not that the pressure sending unit up top? I have driven the car quite a bit, well over 100 miles after verification of oil pressure and it behaves just fine. The oil pressure on the dash reads very low, getting lower as the temps come up, reads around 16psi on cold start. I checked to see what hptuners logs but it is the same as what the dash reads obviously. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. I would just throw a mechanical gauge on the A pillar but the check gauges idiot light keeps dinging at me and I feel like this issue could be resolved I just need to know what else to look for.

American Heritage

have you hooked up a scanner to see what PSI the computer is seeing? I see you checked voltage but have you looked at the tech 2 or similar to see what the computer is seeing?

cut the filter open and look for metal shards, its will be obvious if your engine bearings are torn up, either shards or glitter.

also no one is going to answer your thread if you use giant paragraphs. Not trying to be rude just trying to help.

dankhts

I've seen this problem before with false/low readings thought I saw a post about some resistor or whatever messing up the gauge and causing it to read goofy but can't find it....
I'd like to know the answer to this as well....

zx3focus

I checked to see what the ecu was seeing via hptuners, it was seeing exactly what the sending unit was telling the cluster. I will have to cut my filter open to see about bearing wear.

Sorry for the long paragraph, I agree, not easy to read.

zx3focus

I put the mechanical gauge back on the filter housing last night to make sure I wasn't imagining things. The mechanical gauge reads about 10 psi above what the sending unit is telling me and it rising to around 40psi with a rev to 4k rpm or so. I am going to put a ported ls6 pump on it I think to cover some bases.

tandt

There have been reports of new sensors flaking out soon after install.