Oil guage or sender unit issues
Thread Starter
Intermediate
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43
Likes: 0
From: hartford ct
Oil guage or sender unit issues
Before putting my car away last fall I replaced the intake manifold and cleaned up a lot of gunk on the block and engine bay. After that, I had issues with oil pressure reading, it would read zero at an idle and would never go over 40. it used idle at 40 and rev up well past the 40 mark. I put the car way to see if the problem would fix its self, but of course it's still there. I now have a temporary manual guage hooked up and it tells me the readings on my stock guage is off by 20-30 psi I have a warm idle at about 30 psi when the stock guage says 0-10 and I'm getting 40-60 when the stock guage says 20-30. My question is where to start, should I just replace the sender unit 1st or is there any other known failure points. If I do replace the sender any recommendations(brand or store) I would prefer to only do this once. Or is there a test for the actual guage I would prefer not to mess with the dash if I don't have to.
thank you.
thank you.
Melting Slicks
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 2,668
Likes: 43
From: Eastern US XX
If you could find out what the typical resistance readings for a set of pressure numbers, you could then check the sender with an Ohm meter. I don;t remember seeing the values in print, but I bet someone can help - even if they could get you 3 or 4 readings from a "correctly functioning" setup, that would give you some idea what you are dealing with.
Race Director
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 16,528
Likes: 53
From: Dayton, Ohio
Ok here goes-preliminary check-make sure with key on pointer is at 0-if it is then pull off wire at sender the needle should peg towards the 80 side -if these 2 things do happen replace sender - if you want to go one step further put a 68ohm resistor between the sender wire and ground and it should read 60(the slash between 40 and 80)
