Hi,
I've got a 2000 Dakota R/T. When braking it says check gauge and alert sound.
Any ideas?

 

My wife was driving when the check gauge occured. I just drove it and couldn't get the check gauge light to come on. I suppose that might suggest it needs to be warmed up before it occurs.
Temperature looked ok, although I didn't drive it very far. Voltage also looks normal. Oil Pressure might be low, but I don't know what's normal for this truck. It shows about 25 (needle is between 0 and 40 and I'm guessing it's about 25). Does that value get affected by whether the truck is warmed up or not?

Thanks for any assistance.

 

I will move this to the 2nd Generation Dakota Sub-Forum.

 

Should be higher than that my 5.2 runs at about 80 psi. Oil pump might be clogged up. How many miles are on it and when was last oil change?

 

Check your oil.It could be low.

 

if it happens with braking i would check your oil level. it is likely just low enough.

 

It's got about 103k miles on it.
Oil was changed about 3,500 miles ago.
I would have checked the oil last night, but the
driveway is on a slant. Taking it in to get the oil
changed today.
The second last oil change, we found that the oil
had been overfilled by quite a lot so we had the shop remove
oil to get the level back to normal. A different shop that changed the oil
after that said there looked to be oil up around the head gasket.
How do I tell if the head gasket may be blown and would overfilling
do that?

Thanks.

 

I forgot to mention that my wife said after breaking and after
the alert, she heard a ticking sound. Could that be the lifters?
From what I've been reading, lots of Dodges have some oil sludge
problem. How difficult is it to clean the "screen" or whatever causes
this clogging?

 

My theory - and its just a guess, but I bet it's close...

You have a leaking intake manifold gasket. This is causing you to burn oil. Maybe a lot, maybe a little less. But, in any event, your oil level is going down every time you drive.

You burned off enough oil since the last change that when you stopped, the oil sloshed around in the pan and the pump was not able to suck up as much as it should, which caused your pressure to drop, which gave you the CEL...

3500 since an oil change is more than enough time to get your truck about 2.5 quarts low, which will often trigger the CEL to start coming on and off...

Similar thing happened to me. I got the oil changed, did not check it, and then one day my CEL comes on as I come to a stop. Checked the oil and it was basically dry. 2.5 quarts low. This was in about 1500 miles or so. I had burned up almost half of my oil because it was getting sucked into the intake while driving.

Moral of the story - if your oil is low, you need to either get the intake fixed or start checking the oil every 500 miles or so until you figure out how fast it is getting used up...

Like I said, just a guess...

 

Allymad is most likely right. Take off your air hat on top of the throttle body and shine a flashlight down through there and see if you have oil down in there a light coating is ok but a puddle is not. 130k is about the time they start getting worse my buddys ram was sucking up a quart about every 500-800miles