oil pressure gauge

I recently did an interview with a top Ford technical guy (actually talking about the check engine light). who told me that it has long been the company's policy not to put real oil pressure gauges on anything but big trucks because the gauges only create confusion, since oil pressure fluctuates so much. Of course, now that I'm posting this, one of you all probably is going to come on and tell me Ford has real oil gauges on new Explorers and all of its vehicles, and I will feel like a fool :O(

What oil pressure gauges report is a matter of lots of confusion among the motoring public. I was told by a truck driver(!) that he could tell the oil *level* by the oil pressure gauge.

Bill Funk Change "g" to "a"

No, he wasn't alking about telling when the oil was *low*, but the oil level in general. The kicker was that this was a truck driver (not the pick-em-up kind, the big rig kind). The kind where running out of oil costs more than the pickup truck costs.

Bill Funk Change "g" to "a"

There is a jumper on the back of the gauge you can remove to turn it into a real gauge -- along with a new pressure sensor.

The exact procedure has been posted here over the last couple of years. If you're serious about changing this, you can dig into the archives, or ask one of the group members who is a mechanic and knows the facts.

There is a resistor that is on the back of the gauge. You don't remove it but just solder a wire shunt across it which effectively takes it out of the circuit for all practical purposes. That makes the change reversible if you decide to go back to the on-off system. And like you said, you need a new pressure sender because the old one is just a switch.

Having made this mod, I would not bother to do it again.

-- Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts:

"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins." -- Debate, U.S. House of Representatives, August 17, 1789