The oil temperature guage on my 97' A6 2.8Q fell to 60 degrees while driving on the freeway. It then raised back up to 90 degrees after 5 miles and stayed there for 30 miles - then it fell back to 60 degrees and remained there. Is the guage likely malfunctioning?

 

Welcome to the forums. Please post your question in the correct forum (A4).

 

Actually it would be the A6 forum eh?

60 is the minimum right (like no response)?

It could be a few things:

Are your other gauges functioning properly? If you watch all of them, and see your fuel drop off with the Oil temp, and seem to have low voltage, your ground wire on the gauges is probably going bad.

Sounds like that is fine though, so I would say you are having oil temp sender unit problems. For other cars I have worked on, you just replace it, but if anyone else has had this problem, maybe they could tell you more.

Either way, it seems like you are not really running 60 degree oil and are really running at approximate normal (90-110), so it is an electronics malfuntion, sounds like from the sending units end if the gauge moved. And gauges don't really have much that breaks... so I would check into the sending unit, maybe just a wire is loose. Again someone else could probably tell you better, I am speaking from experience with other cars.