oil pressure

i have a pajero and for some reason, and only occassionally, when i take my foot off the throttle i see my oil pressure guage drop significantly. I have plenty of oil in the engine and its serviced every 3 months.
Is it possibly a sensor problem or something more worse?

cheers

Could be a faulty Oil Pressure sender switch. There are other breeds of vehicles prone to this as well but because they only have a warning light it dosen't show.
Get a oil pressure check with a master guage when the oil is hot. This is the only course of action.

Panther

Get some advice, but I would say possibly a vaccuum may cause this in this situation.

thanks guys. It hasnt done it since i posted that question a month ago.... until last night coming home from work. But its fine today. i will get it looked at.

Petrol or Diesel?

What Oil are you using?

How significantly does the gauge drop, and does it come back up to normal range when you apply power again.

Cheers Ric

If its operating normally most of the time and showing you have oil pressure, personally i wouldnt worry about it (a minor spasm).

The guage works off the manifold pressure/ vacuum which is why you are seeing a movement on decrease of revs. If you service every 3 months, just get it looked at next service, (in my opinion).

Meanwhile.... if it shows no pressure for a long time, you should sort it out sooner rather than later just in case it really is a problem and not just a leak in a hose joint or something.
The PCV valve and associated hoses may need a cleanout....


cheers.

Hey Ho, (or is it Hi Ho?) How didya get on with your oil pressure problem?
Just curious.
P

When you start up on a cold or not cold morning and the big ends make the DONK DONK DONK noise, you then know something more sinister is flip plopping your oil pressure gauge?
You should still be able to get another 100.000 ks out of the old girl, before your stuck out in the middle of no ware? Hey you new it was going to happen one day?
As has already been stated, a quality oil pressure gauge is the only true answer.
Cheers Chris

It may also be the oil pickup pipe starting to block up in the sump …. Just a thought. cheers

well since all those months ago, ive not noticed it happen again but since that time i have been constantly aware of a possible problem and ALWAYS find myself looking at the guage almost as often as the spedo itself, lol. No problems to report as yet.
Thank you to everyone for responding. It wasnt until this weekend at Laanecoorie that GoldstalkerGPX asked me about it and said i hadnt replied to this post. Honestly, i hadnt seen this post and wasnt aware you guys were asking, so for that i apologise.

Hello Howard,
It is normal for the oil pressure reading to drop when you take your foot off the pedal.
Early mornings when the engine & oil are cold the high low pressures read higher.
I see your first post was in November and ambient temperatures would have been higher.
I personally wouldn't worry about it if the pressure reading is normal when the revs are above idle.

Cheers
Peter

serviced every 3 months ???? TH you must be bangin on some k's I have only been doin me 60 series every 5000kms for the last 5 years and sometimes that goes over 3 months actually a fair bit lately. just sold it last week ; cause it didn't have the nads to pull me new taj on wheels, and bought a 61 12ht on ebay last week in steak an kidney,flew up an got it it ran home fine an didn't use a drop of oil but did what u said, did the oil filter ect an still does it ,up at 3/4 under acceleration but 1/4 at idle .....seems fine tho when cold the pressure is always higher at idle than when hot.was a tad worried but apparently the 12ht will shut down with low oil pressure so I think don't stress....ps "your either a Cruiser man or a Patrol man " or woman ..

mungass, yes i do a lot of driving and by the time 3 months is up its usually due for a service anyway, lol.

My neighbour had a similar problem,tried a thicker oil didn't help much ended up being the clearance in the big end bearings(worn).