oil light

From : nunya

Q: from christopher d. thompson nospam@nospam.nospam subject re 96 ram 1500 - 318 - oil light date sunday march 09 2008 511 pm snip how often has the oil been changed regularly as in every 3000 miles put a manual gauge on it and run it for long enough to get it acting up if the manual gauge shows a problem then drop the pan and look. i suspect you will find sludge particles floating around in the oil pan these get picked up in the oil pumps pickup screen little by little. then you find a dropping or erratic oil pressure. most common is the dropping oil pressure. if you find sludge your best course of action is to replace the engine assy. the next best would be to clean the pan replace the oil pump and pickup tube then hope you can last a while before enough of the sludge up top gets dislodged to start causing you problems again. when i was working on cars i replaced more than a few engines for this very thing. another guess would be that you have a leaking oil pressure sending unit. ive seen them leak into the plastic housing and after its warmed up good give all kids of erratic/wrong readings before again this can be proven with a visual inspection and mechanical oil pressure gauge. -- chris my 97 ram with a 360 gets the oil changed every 10000 miles with a quality synthetic and a k&n oil filter. so far i have 28200 miles and it is still a daily driver. no smoke plenty of power getting low on vacuum pressure though. i had the same issue with this truck last summer and all i had to do was change out the oil pressure sending unit. michael .

Replies:

From : ann

oil pressure sending unit huh..... i will see if they can change that as well. thanks from christopher d. thompson nospam@nospam.nospam subject re 96 ram 1500 - 318 - oil light date sunday march 09 2008 511 pm snip how often has the oil been changed regularly as in every 3000 miles put a manual gauge on it and run it for long enough to get it acting up if the manual gauge shows a problem then drop the pan and look. i suspect you will find sludge particles floating around in the oil pan these get picked up in the oil pumps pickup screen little by little. then you find a dropping or erratic oil pressure. most common is the dropping oil pressure. if you find sludge your best course of action is to replace the engine assy. the next best would be to clean the pan replace the oil pump and pickup tube then hope you can last a while before enough of the sludge up top gets dislodged to start causing you problems again. when i was working on cars i replaced more than a few engines for this very thing. another guess would be that you have a leaking oil pressure sending unit. ive seen them leak into the plastic housing and after its warmed up good give all kids of erratic/wrong readings before again this can be proven with a visual inspection and mechanical oil pressure gauge. -- chris my 97 ram with a 360 gets the oil changed every 10000 miles with a quality synthetic and a k&n oil filter. so far i have 28200 miles and it is still a daily driver. no smoke plenty of power getting low on vacuum pressure though. i had the same issue with this truck last summer and all i had to do was change out the oil pressure sending unit. michael .