420A Oil light flickering

[96WhiteEclipse]

Hey guys, I have a 2g eclipse GS. Recently when I drove it the oil light started flickering on and off. I pulled over and checked the oil level and it was a tad low but nothing that would starve the engine. I topped it off and the oil light started flickering again but mostly just at idle. When I would rev it a tad it would turn off. Do I have a bad connection? Or low oil pressure? I’m running 5w-30 currently

 

[stealthee]

Hey guys, I have a 2g eclipse GS. Recently when I drove it the oil light started flickering on and off. I pulled over and checked the oil level and it was a tad low but nothing that would starve the engine. I topped it off and the oil light started flickering again but mostly just at idle. When I would rev it a tad it would turn off. Do I have a bad connection? Or low oil pressure? I’m running 5w-30 currently

Flickering oil light is going to usually indicate low oil pressure. Could mean you're ready to spin a bearing.

 

[96WhiteEclipse]

Flickering oil light is going to usually indicate low oil pressure. Could mean you're ready to spin a bearing.

What should I do about low oil pressure?

 

[RamenPride]

What should I do about low oil pressure?

try a thicker oil or rebuild the engine. First make sure the low oil pressure light sender is good, with a good connection.

 

[Drewpy Dawg]

The only way to know for sure is to use a mechanical test gauge connected to the housing where your oil pressure sensor is located. Then you can check what the actual oil pressure is. If that's good then you may just have a faulty switch that operates the light. If the gauge reading is not good then you have a whole other road to go down to fix the low pressure.

 

[luv2rallye]

Most likely a bad connection to the sensor switch or bad switch. Check it before assuming your engine needs rebuilding and before spending thousands.

 

[BLACK'98DSM]

Yea my first assumption is a faulty oil pressure switch, not that the oil pressure is actually low or that the engine needs to be rebuilt. Why we're throwing those ideas out first, I'm not sure. The oil pressure switches are a massively common problem with the 420A, and you can still buy them everywhere.

At normal operation, the switch will not illuminate the warning light until the pressure is less than 3-5 psi depending which variation you have. At this pressure, the top end would quickly become noisy and you'd notice performance loss. So unless that has occurred, go get a $10 switch and be done.

 

[stealthee]

Yea my first assumption is a faulty oil pressure switch, not that the oil pressure is actually low or that the engine needs to be rebuilt. Why we're throwing those ideas out first, I'm not sure. The oil pressure switches are a massively common problem with the 420A, and you can still buy them everywhere.

At normal operation, the switch will not illuminate the warning light until the pressure is less than 3-5 psi depending which variation you have. At this pressure, the top end would quickly become noisy and you'd notice performance loss. So unless that has occurred, go get a $10 switch and be done.

When you come from the 3000GT world where a flickering oil means imminent doom you'd get why it was suggested.

 

[luv2rallye]

Ya, Chrysler is a totally different world, tee hee.

 

[BLACK'98DSM]

The oil pump is one thing Chrysler engineered correctly. I always replaced the oil pumps if I were building a 420A, but never because of failure and only because I preferred the high pressure units (or wanted to replace it while I'm there). The oil pumps tend to outlive the rest of the engine. I've seen these engines with both piston slap and oval shaped camshaft journals but still idling at 15 psi warm. A healthy 420A with a high pressure pump installed will idle at 35 psi hot starting at ~80 psi cold start. This is measured using the hole for the oil pressure switch. It's almost exactly the pressure you'd see at the cylinder head galleys, minus the slight losses from a cast galley finish.

The oil pressure switch, on the other hand, was not great. Although a very simple device, I'd argue that it's even under-enginnered. After so many years of vibration, the internal contacts always fail. Even the Standard Motor Products example, which claims to be "thoroughly revised and reliable" is either the same or worse than OEM. It's likely the same damn part with a different color female connector. It's an easy pill to swallow though considering the $4-$15 price tag vs what a full rebuild or oil pump would cost.

I was there once, in a similar scenario. Seeing that oil pressure warning light flash for the first time, and watching it flash intermittently while I limped the car home. Only to replace that damn switch and have the problem disappear. This car had north of 200k miles with the original oil pump also.