Hi there, Has anybody find the solution of the upcoming oil-pressure-light at idling? Hennie.
Yes. 99 times out of 100, it is simply a bad oil pressure switch turning the light on, but the pressure is actually OK. I won't go into the details (they have been discussed on here before), but you may or may not also find that the old switch is dripping oil. For the 1 chance in 100 that the pressure is actually low, you may want to pay to have a gage temporarily hooked up to measure the pressure to make sure it is in spec. Or you can simply replace the pressure switch and go on your merry way and probably be fine. Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
Thank you Bill, one of these days I gonna replace the pressure switch and I let you know the result via this NG. Regards Hennie.
Today I replaced the oil pressure swich. It was not a simple job to do. The switch is hidden behind a metal shield who is hard to remove wih standard tools. Anyway, the oil pressure light stays off when idling! Thanks again Bill. Hennie.
You're welcome - glad to help. As far as the difficulty - yeah, that is just the way things are with today's cars - they are so compacted and integrated (for weight, mileage, performance, and a host of electronics - some useful, some not so useful - but it's what we the consumer and the gov't demanded of the automakers) that ain't nothin' simple. Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
A difficult to replace oil pressure switch is not the result of design complexity. It's simply lack of attention to ease of maintenance, probably driven by lowering manufacturing costs regardless of later maintenance costs.
I disagree. His diffucilty was due to things being very crowded - the proverbial 10 pounds of stuff (sensors, modules, wiring, pipig, hoses, etc., etc., etc.) being forced into a 5 pound bag (shape and size envelope). The pressure switch had to go where it was because of the existing engine design. If you routed the switch to another location (piping), then you would simply have compounded the problem (weight, volume, complexity, cost). If things weren't so tight space-wise, perhaps the shield would not have needed to be removed, or perhaps could have been deleted entirely. Stick that switch any place else, and chances are there would already be another thing (or two) in that place that would have to be relocated. It snowballs. Bottom line: In any design, everything is a compromise. With things so tight, you can't fix one problem without making three others a lot worse. With things being jammed so tight, maintenance considerations have to take a back seat. Size, weight, power, fuel economy, initial cost, ease and cost of maintenance *cannot* all be 9's or 10's. Priorities are set - on any given vehicle, some aspects are a 3 so that others can be maybe 6 or 7. Start pushing any one aspect to an 8 or higher, and something has to give (in the opposite direction). Add even more stuff at the factory (full blown workstation computers, refrigerant loops in the seat cushion, and other crap that are being added to cars now), and all the numbers across the board will drop incrementally, and we'll keep wondering why a "simple" repair costs $500 or takes 3 trips to the dealer to be properly diagnosed. But we've done it to ourselves. Did I mention that this is one of my hot buttons? Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
You and me both. I get into arguments here all the time with people who like to claim that modern cars are "so much more reliable" than older cars.... but my 13 year old car is already getting almost un-maintainable because of parts going out of production, semiconductor obsolesence, etc. whereas parts for my FORTY ONE year old car are still readily available. And cheap, too! So what if a modern engine can last half a million miles? The automated butt-scratching accessories and the cheap plastics all over the car will fall to bits around it in 10 years even if it only has 50,000 miles on it by then. I doubt any car made after 1990 will be maintainable when its over 40 years old.
So is my '73, actually. The '66 has NO plastic, the 69 R/T has some, and the 73 Satellite is all plastic as is the 93 Eagle. But its kinda funny- they can now make the dashboard vinyl last a lot longer than the old dashes did, but all the hard plastics in modern cars get brittle as potato chips after 10 years or so. My 73 has one big dashboard crack, but all the hard plastic is perfect. The 93 on the other hand has a perfect dash, but every AC vent is falling apart, the cupholder is cracked, and all the hard panels and trim around the door handles are breaking apart.
I agree with you here. Too much stuff is being built in and it costs too much to add. Unfortunately the packages tend to force one into this. * I didn't tell Chrysler I wanted a large hard disk in my next car, nor * did I say I want a built in GPS. For both devices I definitely don't want them locked into my car. I want them portable so I can take them when I travel to far away places and rent a car. Please Chrysler just provide a jack for input to the cars audio system. I discussed this with a Chrysler rep at our annual Auto Show. He was all excited about these devices in the new cars and appeared a bit depressed when I told him why I and most of my friends don't want these devices locked into one car.
