Does my oil weight sound about right or is it too thin when it gets hot?

 

oil weight is fine, but just for laughs bump it up to 15-40. my pressure was at 15psi warm at idle before. after 15-40, it jumped to 19.

i didnt read through you whole thread, but judging on your first post, i do have a guess. its a long shot, but i think you have a plugged galley somewhere near the pressure sender. this would explain why the car is seeing low pressure. it would also explain why the tech saw normal pressure. when they test oil pressure, they tap into a seperate port on the oil filter housing.

my guess is that when you install your aftermarket pressure guage, you will see normal presure since you will tap into a different port than the stock pressure port. get what i mean?

 

Ya that makes sense. So if I pull my filter and pull my pressure sensor do you think I could get the material to drop? Or what if I blew canned air in there? That's easy enough I should do it just to eliminate the possibility. And I'll bump up my oil weight as well in the meantime.

 

you could do that but i highly doubt you would be able to find the plug, if there is one. youd have to take the filter off and the oil cooler. if your lucky you might find a piece of gasket in there or something. truth be told though, youd have to take quite a bit of engine apart to find the plugged passage if there even is one. but if you're bored and got an hour or two to spare, go right at it and check it out.

just remember, we do not know for a fact that you have low oil pressure. what we do know is that the pressure sender is putting out a signal saying you have low pressure. you've ruled out the sender. so go from there

 

Thanks. Will be finally installing a guage that will give me a real read out this week. ordered the last of the parts I needed today. After I get that installed I will see what kind of numbers I get. Does anybody know what the limit is to set off the low oil pressure? what pressure should I be seeing? what is "good" pressure?

 

if i am correct, the sender will trigger low pressure only on cold startup. it doesnt check for pressure on warm start up. as for cruising, i have no idea how the sender triggers low pressure, but im pretty sure its around 14psi

 

ok. will follow up with pressure numbers. cross fingers for the best. I hope this verifies it is a sender issue and not an actual oil issue

 

im just about positive after a couple senders, you have ruled out actual low oil pressure. install your oil gauge and get back. im willing to bet you will see numbers just fine. if your idling at 20psi or more, you are just fine

 

Update: I installed the oil pressure sensor. Three times actually. I couldnt tell where it was leaking from so I kept undoing and redoing my work. Well it turns out that the oil pressure sensor that I bought was the thing leaking. Brand new part and its bad (glowshift). well, luckily they warranty their stuff so a new one is on its way. but for the short time I had it in it was reading 65 psi. VERY cold start... then after a few minutes it was down to 40-45 psi. And thats all I know so far. Hopefully now I can get the new sensor and see what it does when its actually hot and moving. but these numbers seemed almost too high? thoughts?

 

After reading most of this post, I'm going to guess your oil pressure is fine. If after you have made SURE it is fine, even at different RPMs....and there really is no 'sludge' in the system and your oil pickup screen is clean, pump is working fine, and you have put in new oil pressure sensors; and your dealer friend says everything is A OK.....

TRY replacing your coolant temperature sensor and let me know if that fixes it, it's weird, doesn't make any sense, but I've read about it somewhere causing the oil pressure lights to come on on VWs / Audi's at under 2000rpms....Also, I don't think the sensor activates until a certain temp/RPM is reached...(see attached Pictures) Just my .02.....

Have you or the dealer 'scanned' the car for codes? What were they, if any at all?