I am new the the Forum and have a question about my 1999 Dodge Dakota 2wd. When I come to a stop the Oil pressure guage drops to 0, when I start back up it comes back up to normal. What would make this happen? I tried draining the Oil and cleaning the Oil pan and system and it helped for a little while (I read it when I Googled this problem) but there has to be something else that is causing the problem. I am afraid I will blow the engine if this contimues to happen. Any help woud be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

sounds like you don't have enough oil in the pan, and it's starving the pump under decel.

 

I have the same problem with my 93 dakota and 97. If I were to add oil the gauge would stay still for about a month then eventually motion up and down.

You might have a slow leak some where near the oil pan.

 

Well, are you using any oil? Mine does the same thing if I forget to check the oil for a week and a half because I am burning so much oil through the intake right now...

 

loss of oil pressure at low RPM's means you have severe wear on your cam bearings or a blocked oil passage. In either case it isn't good & the only real fix is a rebuild.

You can limp it along for a while by adding a super thick STP oil treatment or other high mileage thickener.

The oil pump pumps oil to the top of the engine & onto the cam. When the bearings are shot there is not as much resistance here & the oil leaks back down too fast. You should also notice that when the engine oil is cold it will hold pressure & when the engine heats up you get this problem.

Be careful now that you have the problem you don't run the engine w/ no pressure. You will damage stuff that is expensive to fix.

Good luck! I've been there myself (but in a ford)

 

Many good replies, but before you go to extremes, remove the sender and put a mechanical gauge on it for a while. just to make sure it's not a gauge problem. mine is normal to fall off at Idle but never to zero.

 

my 98 V6 with 160K miles had a similar problem. I pulled the pan and found a couple of inches of nasty black goo in the bottom of the pan and the oil pump pickup half way clogged. It turned out the the plenum gasket under the intake was shot and allowing fuel to contaminate the oil and create lots of nasty sludge. I cleaned stuff up and replaced the plenum gasket, but the engine died another 10K later. Look down the throttle body with a flash light and see if you see oil in the intake, if so the plenum gasket is shot and you engine is probably full of sludge. Pulling the pan on the V6 is an absolute pain in the a$$. If I had to do it again, I would just pull the whole engine.

good luck.

If you can also follow the advice and put a mechanical gauge on it temporarily to see what the minimum truly is. It's been a couple of years so my memory may be off, but I thought that the minimum pressure that Dodge recommends at hot idle for the magnum engines was like 7-8 psi.

 

Its most likely sludge causing it. My woods jeep does the same thing only its doesnt go the whole way to zero but I cant expect much out of her after all she does have 216k on her.