Replacing Oil Pressure Sensor/ VDO or FAE

This part is normal.

Do you mean it's just random?

It's hard to say what you mean by "erratically". The gauge should show more pressure with higher RPM and/or lower temps. idling with high temps should show lower pressures, but IME it stays over 1.5 Bars with my oil.

Sorry, don't know about that.

The sender is fine. It works sometimes perfectly. If it was bad it wouldn't.

Take it off and I'll bet you'll find the braided copper wire going to it is shredded. Clean it up and desolder the old dead bits from the silver connecter, resolder the now-clean wire onto the now-clean silver barrel and it'll be good as new.

You'd have to do this anyway with a new sender, so uh...

Keep in mind these cars are meant to be repaired.

Thanks Richard. I'll try what you're suggesting, but since I haven't even looked at the sender before, I just wanted to be sure of what you're suggesting. Are you saying that the wire is soldered on to the connector, or the connector is soldered on to the sender, so that I'll have to get a soldering iron out there to disconnect it?

In either case, thanks for the help on this.

Yeah. You're tellling me LOL

Tim

Not really. My oil pressure used to drop to between 1.5 and 2 bars when I was idling.

Also, the gauge will stay up at 3 for a while even after I turn the car off. Not normal

The sender screws into the engine and has a post sticking up.

What fits on there is a plastic connector shell that has a silver plated barrel connector (used everywehre on these cars, seat switches, headlight connectors etc) that has braided copper wire soldered into it.

Just like the headlight connectors, you open the plastic shell and the silver barrel with wire pops out but I suspect what you're gonna find is the wires are all broken and makes an intermittant connection (at best) until it warms up then it doesn't. This is fairly normal and predictable, for copper wire in a hot place subject to vibrations work-hardens then breaks.

I've redone both the temp and oil pressure sensors which faield on my car.

Heres some pics of what you get once you open the plastic connector shell:

Terrific! Much appreciated. I'll give it a shot.

Tim