Our Toyota Corolla wagon just broke down with only 122k on the clock.  Oil
light at hot idle, oh dear.  This required me to stop my continual working
on Dutiful Passage (required VG content <g>) to attend to the failure.  It
was a bad sender -- as usual the diaphragm was leaking oil into the upper
part of the sender.  Cost $3 at the FLAPS.  The engine itself had close to
20 psi at hot idle.

The reason I'm mentioning this other than to lampoon (lambaste?) our
beloved beasts, is that when I cut the top off the old sender to verify the
cause of the problem (yep, oil in the upper chamber), I noticed that the
terminal on top of this OE sender screwed off, and underneath it was a
screwdriver adjustment to set the trigger pressure over a fairly wide
range.  You can bet that the replacement didn't have this little
refinement.  But I'm surely wondering why Nippon-Denso or whoever bothered
-- do they make one sender and adjust it at the factory for whatever
pressure the customer desires?  They could do it with a robot easily
enough, no need to involve a person.  It would save stocking different
strength springs.  But...butbutbut...why?  A robot would cost more than a
whole lot of springs, and doing it by hand would be ferociously
expensive.  I'm sure their spring-making industry keeps close enough
tolerances for this job.  Just machining the hex and screw threads on the
terminal didn't come free.

Anyone have a notion?  I don't belong to the Corolla list <g>.

d
David Beierl - Providence, RI
  http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"