FYI: oil can purge through oil sensor!

[denialdave]

Yesterday I drove my car to a friends in the rain. At his house we hopped in his truck. While driving down the rode we noticed an oil slick in the other lane and commented (after about 4 miles) how that guy was probably screwed!

When we came back we realized the slick was in his driveway and under my car (99 cobra). In that four miles I lost all but a quart of oil, luckily it was at 25mph and very cool outside.

I called the SVT service manager today and they said the oil sending units have a diaphragm that can give out and you "will quickly purge the engine of oil".

I never saw the engine light come on, and when I filled it up with oil and changed the sensor it fired up just fine--but I think I could have toasted the motor easily if I had been on the highway listening to the radio. By the time the red light would come on you'd be permanently gluing stuff together, or dropping parts out the bottom!

 

[alfman9]

Didn't you notice your oil pressure gauge?

 

[denialdave]

How often do you look at your oil gauge?

I'm sure I don't look at mine several times in a four mile trip. Oil pressure was fine at start up, and I didn't look at it again.

 

[COBRA90GT]

So the factory pressure sender suffered from a failure & proceeded to bleed out a large volume of oil?

When you removed the faulty oil pressure sender, could you visually see any damage to it?


I thought that the factory oil pressure gauge/sender was a joke anyways, seeing as how it is just an 8psi open/closed switch (certainly 8 psi is not enough pressure when you're driving moderately).

I think 20 - 25 psi is standard at idle. Just another reason to wire up an aftermarket oil pressure gauge since the factory one is junk.

My .02