False Oil warning - Typ 89

[Brett Dikeman]

At 3:52 PM -0800 11/16/04, tihol tiholov wrote:
>I asked this and no reply, so I'll try again differently.  Can't 
>find it in the knowledge base or the archives (hard searching there).

Yeah, we know :(  Google sucks at searching email archives because of 
all the interlinking...and the fact that they don't index us very 
often anymore.  I've complained to Google, and been told to take a 
long walk off a short pier.  We are not very big fish, to say the 
least.

>2. What does the red oil symbol, displayed by the check system, mean exactly?

It means "you dumbass, you're out of oil, stop the car NOW NOW NOW!" 
:-)  Seriously- it means autocheck didn't see enough oil pressure at 
the RPM you are at, or something is wrong with the sensors/wiring and 
autocheck can't tell what the oil pressure is.

It is particularly thrilling when doing a zillion* miles an hour 
around a hard blind-apex turn at Mont Tremblant (the Bridge).  In my 
case, it's the infamous oil starvation problem in left-hand turns, so 
I get to find an S-car windage tray and install it at some point 
before spring, because my gauge drops below 2 bar in hard lefts.

>   Is it a warning for oil pressure out of spec or is it also related 
>to the temp sender?  On my car the oil symbol flashes 3 times with 
>the tripple chime on after I go through the check system symbols 
>with the ignition on, even before starting the engine.  When running 
>it warns me at about 3K RPM.

Since the oil pressure system is dynamic and based on RPM, Autocheck 
is similarly clever.  I believe the Bentley discusses it further, but 
the basic idea is that above a certain RPM it needs to see more than 
2 bar or so.

If the warning comes on before you've even started the car, something 
is wrong with one of the sensors OR wiring OR autocheck.  Check for 
voltage at the sensors, make sure the wire colors match the diagram, 
etc.

Brett
* about 40mph.  Zillion sounds cooler, right?
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/