Switch to 5w30 has made my pressure gauge crazy
 

Hi All,

So to set some background -

Innovate MTX oil pressure + temp gauge. Just replaced the pressure sender with a new one about 1.5 months ago. Both temp and pressure read off a beatrush sandwich plate between filter.

Changed to LiquiMoly 5w30 about 4 days ago from Mobil1 0w20.

My oil pressure readings have gone insane, on acceleration I get anywhere from 0-100+ within seconds of each other. Super erratic like.

I thought it was a bad filter that I got so I switched it out with another new mobil1 filter but still being all weird.

The gauge was totally fine before I switched over. Any ideas?

Change back to 0w20. No brainer.

And put oem filter

Ummm why? The pressure gauge should measure pressure. Is it oil specific? The sensor itself may not even be vehicle specific--just the adapter. 0-20 or 5-20 is recommended but 5-30 is not crazy. I feel like there is a calibration needed or a bubble is against the sensor or something.

Again, this shouldnt matter. There are plenty of people and teams running aftermarket filters.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...e-oil-pressure

Make sure you put enough oil but it sounds like a sending unit issue.

Check the wires on the sensor if the one wires tab is lose even a little the wire will bounce on and off the post and will do execatly that had the same problem the other day. Hopefully thats all thats wrong with it for you, I have the exact same setup.

Move the pressure sender to the galley port. I had originally had my sender in the galley port and then tried the sandwich plate location and the pressure readings were bouncing all over. Went back to the galley port and it stabilized and reads normal again.

My pressure readings are nice and consistent from the galley port. It's where I ran my pressure sensor on my EJ subies too.

This is my next course of action, i've always figured that it might not be the best place to read from. The temps are always normal reading from there but seems like a place to get a lot of fluctuation.

Yeah I have to agree, the oil nor the filter should matter. I am using a fairly expensive nice filter that I have run from the beginning with zero issues.

Just to be clear, you've been running the same part number but you've changed your filter at every flush, right??

Yes lol Fresh filter with every oil change. Not that much of an idiot.

I've had issues with aftermarket oil filters occasionally, a particular car may not like a particular filter. My Forester XT routinely blows out the media of Purolator fitlers, causing bypass failure, this happened within 500 miles two times, so I switched to S2K/RX8 filters. Problem resolved.

I have the same gauge, and I replaced my stock pressure sender with the Innovate sender. I get no fluctuations, my pressure is consistently about 20-30psi higher with 5w30 than it was with the stock 0w20 oil.


I would check to make sure your sensor isn't grounding out somewhere. My old prosport oil pressure gauge did this when the sensor wire got partially melted and was grounding on the engine.