Oil Pressure Guage never changes?

[60birdtom]

After startup my oil pressure guage moves to 60 psi but never changes after that:

60 psi - cold engine.
60 psi - warm engine.
60 psi - at 75 mph.
60 psi - at idle.

My training tells me that a warm engine at idle should have a lower oil pressure, especially since my MM idles so low anyway. Then again, I'm not that familiar with the 4.6 DOHC, so maybe that's normal?

I know that guage questions have been talked about before but I haven't found an answer to this - so far. The guys in my shop don't know either, although we haven't checked for TSB's as yet........

By the way, I finally got around to changing the oil on my MM (it still had the factory fill which was 1 year old) at 737 miles. I used the newly released Motorcraft 5W20 Full Synthetic. First thing I noticed was that the engine got much quieter. Not a bad thing.

[bchapman]

Last I heard, that gauge was a dummy.

[Logan]

Yes, the factory oil gauge and sender are dummies. They go to their pre-programmed state and that's it.

What you need to do is replace the factory sender (Connected by the oil filter). Replace the factory sender and the factory gauge (You must do both), with Autometer part number 4327. If you want a uniform appearance, replace the volt gauge with part number 4391. The backlighting is different on the standard autometer gauge, so I recommend changing both. Set ya back about $90-100.

[WolfeBros]

Anything over 6.5 PSI of pressure closes a contact in the sending unit which puts ground on the wire to the oil pressure gauge which then will read 60-65 psi. Yep......its a dummy all right.

FoMoCo has been doing this for years on standard production cars. The surprize for us came when they did it with Autometer gauges. What was Autometer thinking ??

Do a search on gages or gauges. There is alot of info on the whole sorted story.:mad2:

[Ross]

60birdtom, didn't anyone in your service department know about these guages?

[RF Overlord]

Originally posted by WolfeBros
The surprize for us came when they did it with Autometer gauges. What was Autometer thinking ??



AutoMeter was thinking: "bottom line"...

When I talked to them, they told me Ford, or in THIS case "Fraud", had contracted with them to build this fake gauge to their (Ford's) specifications and they weren't allowed to discuss it...same answer I got from Arvin/Meritor about the exhaust system...

If AutoMeter didn't take the job, then Sun or VDO or Stewart-Warner WOULD have, so...they took the low road...they probably figured the 2% of us that figured it out wouldn't hurt their rep too badly... :rolleyes:

[WolfeBros]

Originally posted by RF Overlord
...they probably figured the 2% of us that figured it out wouldn't hurt their rep too badly... :rolleyes:


Yep we are the dummies that bought the car because it had cool Autometer gauges installed for "the serious automotive enthusiast", (:rolleyes: ) and then bought the replacement gauges from them once we figured out the originals were fake. They get paid from Ford and then from us again. Not a bad deal for them at all. :eek:

[MAD-3R]

Ahh Capitalism at it's finest!!

[WolfeBros]

Originally posted by MAD-3R
Ahh Capitalism at it's finest!!

Yep...wish I had thought of that idea. :lol:

[60birdtom]

So far, no one in our Service Department has mentioned the guage issue - probably because no customer has complained about it. It will be complained about now - by me!

Since we sell Lincolns and Mercurys, our customers tend to be quite on in years and probably don't pay any attention to the oil pressure guages anyway.

We've sold only 4 Marauders to date, including mine.

[RF Overlord]

Originally posted by 60birdtom

Since we sell Lincolns and Mercurys, our customers tend to be quite on in years and probably don't pay any attention to the oil pressure guages anyway.



You're probably right on, there...but apparently SOME people paid TOO MUCH attention to the O.P. gauge...Ford got tired of 'splaining that it's SUPPOSED to move, and it's SUPPOSED to read lower after the motor's warm, etc...so they just made a "gauge" that reads perfect pressure at all times...problem solved...at least that's the story I was told... :shake:

[mtnh]

Very technical service dept, there, Tom.
Who would have thought of looking here for answers for a ford service department?
Make well sure that you buy some services so as to not look like one of those guys that just comes in for "free" stuff. Those customers are handled at lower priority. Nyuck nyuck.

Impressed,

Mike