thin morning while driving to work my oil pressure gauge spiked at the high end and stayed there.

If i shut the car off it goes to 0 but as soon as ignition is on its at the max.

Any ideas

its a 12a stock

Jay
1984 FB

 

More than likely you have a bad gauge. Check your connection under the oil filter. DIsconnect, re-connect and check. If it is still doing the same thing you need to replace the gauge.

 

Would it just crap out like that.

Is there a way to test it?

J

 

yea you can test it, i think the haynes manual says it should read between 120-220 OHMs.

 

I think that's for the oil pressure sending unit gilmore03, not the gauge. Mine did this and the cause was a broken wire on the condenser that's connected to the sending unit line and is bolted to the transmission inspection cover on the rear iron. The wire had broken off and was shorting to the rear rotor housing. When the gauge sees less resistance on this line (a short is zero resistance), it goes up, so when it sees zero resistance it goes full scale. It could be the gauge, but I doubt it. I'd suspect the condenser itself (it could short internally...just disconnect it and see what the gauge does) or the sending unit. The sending unit should never go to zero resistance...according to the factory service manual, it should be 102 ohms for full scale.

The shorted wire on mine ruined the gauge. Before this happened, it read about 65 pounds of oil pressure at idle, now it reads less than 30. I verified I still have 65 pounds of pressure with my brother's mechanical gauge.

Rich

 

I was thinking about opening up the cluster and blacking out the side guages.

Can I run new guages in the stereo surround and if so what brand would you suggest quality wise. And looks (retro)

Jay
1984 FB

 

90% positive it's a short in the sending unit. Does the needle zero out again when the car power is off?

 

Yes when i shut down the needle slowly floats back ot the "0" mark

as soon as i turn the ignition to "on" not even started it shoots back to the 100+++ mark

Jay
1984 FB