Oil Pressure/check Engine Light

Mustang922

New Member
Aug 16, 2014
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Hey all, I recently purchased a 1995 mustang 5.0 automatic with 153k on it. I will be honest the kid I bought it from did not know what he was doing. So today I gave the car a tune up(spark plugs, fuel filter, changed oil and filter, new starter and battery and cleaned cleaned and recharged the k&n filter). When I changed the oil there was maybe 2 quarts emptied between the pan and filter so I put in the 5 quarts and new filter. The oil pressure gauge read between the a and l. When I pulled the dipstick it looked like 2 sticks were put together and it was covered with oil maybe 5 inches high. I'm not sure what the heck happened.. Then my check engine light came on when I started to drive it.. Maybe you guys can help me out what's going on. Will I need to rebuild the motor this winter?
 
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It's probably a good idea to replace the dipstick with the correct part if the one on the car has been messed with. There are a lot of places online where you can order the OEM part. You might also want to replace the dipstick tube as well, just in case a previous owner messed with that too. Is it the stock oil pan or an aftermarket pan?

Once you have the oil level resolved and can confirm the proper fill, I would strongly suggest running a compression and leak-down test. Those results coupled with oil pressure will give you a good picture of engine's health. If any one of those three don't read correctly, then you'll probably have to address a hardware issue or do a complete rebuild.

There is an oil level sensor on the side of the stock pan which could be bad or have a wiring issue, which would trigger the low oil light. If it's the check engine/service engine light, then you'll need to pull codes.

Good luck, I hope it's not too serious.
 
Just in case, do you realize that there are two drain plugs on a Mustang? There's one in front by the sway bar as well. If you didn't drain that one you may have overfilled the oil pan. Granted, there won't be 3 quarts of oil caught in the front of the oil pan, probably less than one.

If you don't have a code reader, I'd get one and find out what the error code is. You also may have other error codes stored in the computer that don't trigger the check engine light.