Oil pressure light keeps going on & off.

Tiny
ATAJETTA
  • MEMBER
  • 2003 VOLKSWAGEN JETTA
  • 1.8L
  • 4 CYL
  • TURBO
  • MANUAL
  • 101,000 MILES
Hey I got a jetta 2003 model @ 163000 km. Its manual. I was having problems with this car specially with the oil pressure light coming on (red oil light) on my dash. Took it to my mechanic changed the oil pressure switch (light went on again) then changed my oil pump. Just thought it was gone forever. It came back on after 100-200 km put in the car. Can someone please tell me what can possibly be wrong? And my oil levels perfectly fine. Car runs perfect, but if im on 1st gear itll go on and off. It kinda gets me worried & its annoying after a while hearing that beep noise & seeing it makes me go nuts! Can someone please tell me what could possibly be wrong?
Sunday, October 19th, 2014 AT 12:50 AM

1 Reply

Tiny
CARADIODOC
  • MECHANIC
  • 33,916 POSTS
Have your mechanic check the actual oil pressure with a mechanical gauge. The pressure sending unit is the more common cause of the problem and some mechanics will just replace it without performing any tests first because the part costs less than the labor time to do a full diagnosis. He will guess right more often than not and save most of his customers some money.

When the most likely suspect doesn't solve the problem, he has to look further. Oil pumps rarely wear out to the point they can't develop any pressure, so unless he knows about some common failure, the next suspect is the engine bearings. There's no real easy way to diagnose that without replacing them, and that's pretty involved, so he probably wanted to replace the pump first to rule that out. The pump has a pressure-relief valve too that can get stuck open with debris and bleed off most of the pressure but that isn't very common.
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Sunday, October 19th, 2014 AT 12:58 AM

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