'91 AWD 5-speed

[aaronspeed]

This car is my sons and we rebuilt the engine and installed it a couple weeks back. When we start the car it runs great but we noticed that the Oil Gage works backwards to other cars we have owned. The gage starts on High then goes to the middle and when the oil warms up it goes to low. The oil light seems to work fine and we have verified the oil pressure with a external gage. We switched the oil sender with another used unit we had from a parts engine and it does the same thing. My guestion is should the dash gage start on low or does the Talon gage start high then drop. I am trying to figure out if both of the senders we have are bad or am I looking at a short in the harness to the gage. Thanks for any help.

 

[DRAGIN]

They do not start high then go low. Sounds like a bad cluster or wiring issue.

 

[erald01]

The stock oil pressure gauges tend to go bad so i suggest an aftermarket one (autometer). But to answer the question the oil pressure gauge should work just like any other cars.

 

[Auto RS T]

I recently encountered this same problem on a 94 AWD I put a head gasket on. 90,000 miles for reference (all stock) The gauge would start high and then once the oil warmed, it would sink just above the minimum mark. I also verified the oil pressure using an external gauge and everything seemed normal. At warm idle it had 20 psi of oil pressure, revved up to 3000 rpm it would see around 60 psi.

After searching this site for a couple hours later that night I came to the conclusion that this is normal on a motor with the balance shafts still in. I drove the car for 2 weeks after that just to be sure and returned it to the owner. Still no problems.

If oil pressure drops off to the low side while cruising, suspect a problem.