Alarm on the Dash

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the free time when you don’t have a car payment.  Luckily manufacturers have turned out a lot of cars that seem to do 200,000 miles with ease and several go way beyond that.  One of my vehicles displayed a little hiccup this week though when a big red alarm showed up on the dash.  It just says Low Engine Oil Pressure.

I’ve been bad over the last couple of years with letting the oil change schedule go WAY beyond 5,000 miles but I haven’t had any kind of alarm show up.  So when I noticed I was barely past 5,000 miles, I decided to try just getting an oil change to see if that cleared up the alarm.  It didn’t.  With a quick Google search, I found a few people online and on YouTube telling me how to fix this alarm.  None said the fix was to get the oil changed or to even check the level or pressure.  It seemed that the universal agreement was that this isn’t actually Low Oil Pressure.  It is the pressure sensor that is bad so it’s sending a message to the dash that it’s angry.  The fix is to replace the sensor.  Does that seem odd to anyone else?

The next time my air conditioning goes out in my home, I’m going to go buy a new thermometer and hang that by my window.  It’s not that it’s hot.  It’s that the sensor thinks it’s hot so a new thermometer should fix that right up.

In reality, I dropped into the shop that’s been servicing my car.  They were slammed the day I stopped in but they said not to worry about the alarm and to call or come back in a day or two for a look.  I guess they too are not alarmed by the alarm indicating LOW OIL PRESSURE.  Let’s hope it holds together.  On my previous vehicles, the only way I’d get an alarm about low oil pressure was to hear a valve lifter ticking or knocking.