It is probably a bad switch. At higher pressures, oil leaks past the
diaphragm inside and gets to the other side, canceling out the switch
action.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of greg p
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 5:15 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: <diesel> oil pressure light at idle/ goes away once engine is
warm

In my 82 diesel van, the oil pressure light comes on at startup and
stays on generally for 1-5 minutes while the engine is cold...  As it
gets warmer, the light will flicker a bit, and come on at high rpm's,
and finally (after 5-10 minutes,) it will not come on at all anymore...

The previous owner told me that "it has done this for the whole time I
owned the car"....  It was a good deal, so I bought it anyway.....  I
have not been driving it (much) and when I do, very gently, and I will
get a oil pressure guage hooked up as soon as I have the chance, but in
the mean time, I just wanted to get some input...

I can't think of a reason why the pressure would be ok at idle/ low rpms
and bad only at high rpm's....   It doesn't seem that a bad oil pump
would cause this, and I can't really tink of anything in the engine its
self that would cause these symptoms.  I tried to check all of the
wiring, replaced the sensor, I am using a good oil filter (german), good
oil, I have checked the place where the sensor screws in for oil flow
and I have read everything I can find in the archives.

Next question... can I salvage an oil pressure guage sender unit from
any other vw's?  I read somewhere online that someone was using one from
a scirocco.  Before you yell at me for not just going out and buying an
aftermarket kit from busdepot, please realize that I am a poor student.

Thank You!
Greg

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