Has this ever happened to anyone else?

[koda2000]

On my daughter's old '01 XLT SOHC (may it rest in peace) the needle on the oil pressure gauge would sometimes bounce around violently. Later I learned this can be due to broken pieces on plastic from the timing chain cassettes blocking the oil pick-up. Once it bounced so hard that the needle ended up underneath it's stop pin (instead of the needle sitting on top of the pin with the engine off). To fix this I didn't feel like taking the instrument cluster apart, so I drilled a small hole in the plastic lens and used a small pick to lift the needle back over to the upper side of the stop pin. It never did it again.

Today I drove my daughter's 2000 Mountaineer 5.0L V8 and I noticed that the oil pressure needle was also underneath the stop pin. This engine runs perfectly and I know the oil pressure is fine. I considered taking the instrument cluster apart to move the needle, but in the end I decided to drill another tiny hole and picked the needle up over the pin. I know if I ask my daughter she'd tell me she hadn't noticed this has happened, so I don't know what caused this. Perhaps a momentarily clogged oil pressure switch? It's back to normal now and if it should happen again I now have a way to fix the needle w/out taking the dash apart.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

 

[hlg99]

Oil pressure transmitter on my old 99 Mounty went bad causing the needle to dance all over. Replaced it, never had the problem again.

 

[ZWilson07]

It has done it on my 2000 before but I never got it to do it again. I did pull the cluster to do it on mine though. It needed some new backlighting bulbs anyways and isn't to hard to pull besides the cable for the gear selection display being a little annoying. It's now torn down as a long term project so I don't know if it was an oil pressure switch/sending unit starting to get wore out or not.

 

[98 MERC]

Mine did this and i had to get a new sensor and wiring repaired.

 

[koda2000]

It has done it on my 2000 before but I never got it to do it again. I did pull the cluster to do it on mine though. It needed some new backlighting bulbs anyways and isn't to hard to pull besides the cable for the gear selection display being a little annoying. It's now torn down as a long term project so I don't know if it was an oil pressure switch/sending unit starting to get wore out or not.

Oh I've taken many clusters out/apart. I know it's not that hard to do. If it was my truck I would have removed it to fix the needle, but my daughter doesn't take care of her truck, so I'm not willing to put any more effort into it than necessary. Besides it may do it again, so I didn't want to take the time to do it the right way only to have it happen again.

 

[boominXplorer]

I had a 98 Mountaineer I bought for cheap with a bad oil leak. Come to find our the reason the oil pan leaked so bad was someone prior attempted to change the oil pump, failed and spludged it up with rtv. Once I got the truck topped off with oil all the oil pressure gauge would do is bounce at warm idle. Well of course one day I was parking it with the needle boucing and turned the truck off while the gauge was on the up stroke and the needle went up and over. It was not a bad sensor though, the truck had over 200k and the motor was worn out.