Okay, some know about my last fiasco about 2 or 3 weeks ago with my brakes going out.

The good news, I have brakes.

The bad news, now my truck is being stupid. I was driving home tonight from a friend's house. I happened to look at my Oil Pressure gauge and saw that it was at about 1/4 of the "W" as my fiance has called it. I texted him and told him I had a question. Later on, about a mile or two down the road, the oil pressure gauge shot up to about 3/4 of the "W". I pulled over and shut the truck off. Pulled the dipstick out, wiped it off, and put it back in. I was at the top of the safe line. After this, my fiance decided my gauge is just being stupid. The truck isn't acting strange, and I wasn't at idle when it was at 1/4 of the "W". However, I did an oil change about 900 miles ago with oil that was originally bought to go in the Jeep (so it wasn't synthetic) and bought an oil filter (Fram XtraGaurd orange box). When I did the oil change, there was some oil missing, however, my fiance and I couldn't remember the last time he did an oil change so we assumed it had been a longgggg time ago.

My fiance is thinking it's possibly my sending unit that has taken a crap. But after doing some of my own research on here (thanks, everyone), I'm thinking it may be because of the crappy non-synthetic oil that my truck isn't used to having and the oil filter (my fiance REALLY dislikes Fram, but it was what the auto parts store we were at had at the mid-range price and I've never really heard of anyone having problems with them).

So now I've come to all of you amazingly smart people, could it be one or both of the above listed things? Or something completely different? Or am I just stressing over nothing?

This truck is the first vehicle I've actually cared enough about to worry about blowing the engine up in. So I might be over reacting. Who knows.

My gauge has never gone out of the "W" (brackets). And have never even hit the 0 or 110 mark.

For the last week or so, the gauge has been around 3/4 of the way up the gauge, but never lower than the 40 mark unless I'm at an idle and even then, it usually didn't go lower than the 40 mark.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the long post.

 

You should lisson to your fiance!

 

Oh trust me, I listened to him, calling AZ tomorrow. But he'd also said to look around because even though he's owned a dodge all his life, he's never had a problem like this.

 

Replace the PCV valve and check your vacuum lines, and breather line to air hat.

 

It is entirely possible that the sending unit is toast -- it does happen, and we see it around here often enough. Or it might be that the detergent in the dino oil has broken up a chunk of the baked-on crud that synthetic leaves behind and that chunk was lodged in there robbing the sending unit of true pressure.

Our engines were designed for dino oil and don't have the tight clearances that demand synthetic, so running synthetic helps the auto parts store more than your engine.

 

Not to open this can of worms again, but... this was never proven to be a scientific fact. All we have are a few people's words against a lot of other people's words.

True that our engines don't need synthetic oil, but they can run better with it. Whether its worth the extra cost is up to opinion, but its been proven to help with power and gas mileage, albeit only slightly. Synthetic oil in the differentials, however, has been proven to increase MPGs by 2+ in some cases. I experienced only slight gains by switching to synthetic, and no MPG gains by putting Royal Purple synthetic oil in my differentials, for example. Results may vary.

The only "fact" that 99% of people seem to agree on about the benefits of synthetic is the ability to go longer between oil changes.

The bottom line is... I doubt it did anything with "crud". However, dino oil vs synthetic should not cause that fluctuation in oil pressure. Now, mine does that all the time. Most of the time, its at the 3/4 mark on the gauge, but it sometimes (especially after its warmed up) goes down to the 1/4 mark. Whether its the sender or the oil pump or whatever, as long as it doesn't approach the extreme of either side of the gauge, I'm happy.

 

It's a pita to do but, pull the oil sending unit and do a mechanical oil pressure test. This will tell you what is going on without a question. If you find that it's the sending unit don't cheap out on parts, I went though 4 echlin sending units, just junk miss read all the time. So get one from a dealer

 

Ive heard that fram is a crap filter, and can cause issues....ive always got the Mopar filter from wal-mart (like 4 bucks) and never had a problem...

 

I use only NAPA gold or Mobil 1 filters. Even on my lawn mower.
I have had fram collapse before.

 

Collapse? There shouldn't be any suction on the filter...... only pressure.

I second the motion for a mechanical gauge. I picked one up at Advance for under 20 bucks. (it was the permanent mount type feller, but hey, it did what I wanted it to.)