For those of you who may remember; I've had an annoying issue with the low oil chime in my Cougar for roundabout 5 or 6 years now.
After a long drive or lots of stop & go the electronic guage would dip to 2 bars and the chime would go off at a stoplight. If I put it in park or gave it juuuuuuust enough gas to raise the RPM a hair It would go away. Letting the car idle for a few minutes would make the issue go away as well.
Now I've known for quite some time this was an electrical issue as the absolute LOWEST pressure I'd ever seen on a mechanical guage was 16 PSI. That was with 10w40 in July after running for an hour and with the car in Drive at idle......The chime goes off @ around 20PSI. At least it did.
I always had the smaller pressure sending unit that threaded right into the block. The one that uses the 22 ohm resistor. 2 years ago, I took the resistor out. Didn't do much Made it read a tad higher when cold, but would STILL set the chime off @ 20 PSI.....It would go off no matter what the ambient air temperature was.
Today I finally got around to installing the extension and the larger style sending unit that is supposed to be used with the full digital dash -- the same one replaced by a pointless TSB to the smaller unit and resistor because the bigger units are more of a real gauge than a dummy light and actually go bad after about 5 years........
5 bars @ idle, 6 bars under load. This was after a rather lengthy trip on a road that is nothing but stop & go and would set it off routinely in about half the distance that I drove today.
I should note that the wire going to the sending unit has new sheathing and corrugated tubing and has been rerouted in a manner that ensures it is not too close to the block as was the case with the old sending unit.
Whether it was the swap of the sending unit type, the wire re-routing/insulating or a little bit of both; who knows. All's I know is that I don't have to play tap the gas pedal at a light or put the car in neutral to stop the chime from annoying me anymore and I'm extremely happy. Just wanted to share :burnout:
Got a pic? I might do this in the spring just for fun;)
I've had intermittent issues with that oil chime in my 20th. I thought they were solved after replacing the sensor (never heard there was more than one for digital dash), but it occasionally goes off still. I'm not sure, but I think it's usually the low oil sensor in the oil pan that sets it off now, 'cause I'm usually a little low and adding oil seems to help. It also seems 'incline' related. It's annoying having 2 sensors and not knowing for sure which is the culprit.
When my chime would go off the digi dash would automatically go to the oil pressure screen. The sender I now have is simply too big to thread straight into the block like the replacement/TSB ones. I found this out a few years ago when I ordered one...Parts guy said there were 2 different types and showed them both to me. Had never seen the big one before that. Started taking note of them on Mark VII's in salvage yards. The Marks/Cougars/birds/all equipped with the smaller one all had the resistor.....This got me to investigating the differences......I can't even remember where I found the info, but I DID remember the info itself ;)
Pics tomorrow as it's supposed to clear up. It's been monsoon season here......AGAIN. :mad:
I routed my sending unit wire up the forward side of the engine and up along the AC lines with zip ties to keep it off any hot surfaces.
done it both cougs.
On my car, the pink? wire going to the sender right next to the oil filter was bad. It had several bad breaks in it. I thought it was my sender and never ever looked as I had the sender go out on my old 86. When I went to replace it, all there was was a wire hanging off the sender. I went to a junkyard, traced back where the wire went, cut it off and went out to my car.
Somehow the wire was ripped or torn off. I cut the wire on my harness, stripped it and the one on the "new" wire. Just wrapped the two together plugged it in and started to car to see if the chime would go off. It did. So I tapped it to the A/C compressor and forgot about it until now. Been that way about 6 months now.
Sort of like this?
(http://images.craigslist.org/3n83p03o45Oe5S95R09c5880739aab8531e91.jpg)
Yup, like that.
Just newer :hick:
i never knew there was a chime... :P
Yours must not work :hick:
ive never seen one offset at a 45. nice.
I actually just went straight from this thread to craigslist and just so happened to be one for sale.
Here's where I got them from.
http://www.bcbroncos.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=217
http://www.bcbroncos.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1496
The sending unit can be purchased at pretty much any auto parts place, but I figured since they had it and the extender is tough to find....
Just get some good Teflon tape and install. A 19 mm deep well socket fits over the extension tube FWIW. ;)
More driving today. SPIRITED driving. No chime :burnout:
Did the old wire harness just plug in with out any mods?
Yes.
The search feature works :D
I had the chime go off for an entire 35 mile trip and it was driving me insane. Not sure why, but the small sender doesn't seem to like synthetic oil. Anyway, I bought the larger unit and extension using the link above to BC Broncos and it arrived yesterday.
I installed the new sender and oil pressure is 5 bars at idle, it tics up to 6 bars when cold, and goes as low as 4 bars (where it sat with the idiot light sender 'normally' when it wasn't chiming my brains out) at hot idle. I can't believe they replaced an actual pressure gauge that is useful with an idiot light sender that fails just as often as the larger unit.
Anyway, glad I'm found this post - my car is drivable again :D
I need to look at mine. This could be considered a more accurate gauge after the swap...correct?
Well, it goes from being essentially an idiot light that uses bars (4 = light off, 2 = oil light on) to being an actual gauge - albeit without actual pressure numbers for each bar.
Perhaps V8 can give us an approximate correlation based on him also having a mechanical gauge to compare it to :D
so what is normal at warm/hot idle?
4 or 5 bars?
the only way i could ever see coming up with a psi relation to an individual bar would be to do the following live test.
you would need to find a couple of nipples with a 1/4 turn cut off ball valve placed in the middle.
you would have to have a provision for an external guage to mount after the cut off valve.
all of this being said, you still would need to have your oem sender and wire hooked up.
now document the psi with the cut off valve open
log in the number of bars seen
now rotate the cut off valve 25% closed
log in the psi reading and the qty of bars seen
now rotate the cut off valve 50% closed
log in the psi readng and the qty of bars seen
rotate cut off valve 75% closed
log in the psi reading and qty of bars seen
plot it out on a chart and you might find the qty of bars showing is not linear with psi.
you might also find that no two cars are the same.
i wanted to do this test at one time until i thought about my previous statement being that no two electromechanical devices act exactly the same. The cloggage of the oil runner ports inside the block are always going to be different as well since people change thier oils differently and use different brands.
Chime doesn't work and headlights have gotten left on twice so far without the reminder and drained battery. Bought part, but can't find it under the dash. It has the electronic dash. Any help appreciated.
Its right above the fuse panel on my 88