jgj

Just spent 3 days in 9 eleven heaven driving the roads of Northern Spain. Unfortunately as I was heading to catch the boat back the England my dashboard lit up in red lights and my oil pressure went to zero. Luckily I was able to stop safely within 10 seconds and coasted to a halt. The car is still not sitting in a lake of oil 24h later. I fired it once 2hrs after for 3secs and it did sound loud but not terminal.

Brief history: Full engine rebuild due to non salvageable crank 15,000m ago. Since then 3 trouble free years, strong engine, no leaks, nothing. Last service was 5m and 2,000m ago so hesitant to blame my shop. If they left something inside surely it would have killed the engine by now. I had it towed to an OPC in Northern Spain. I guess I'll find out on Monday. The chief technician has been there since the air cooled era so I'm hopeful. It's incredibly hard to find independent air cooled specialists in Spain late on a Saturday evening, and harder still to get towed there. Frankly I was just happy to get it to an OPC rather than the nearest local workshop!

I've read a great many useful posts here from people suffering a similar fate. Usual things to check pressure sender (I just couldn't squeeze my hand through to check), release valve, obstructions/debris in the filter. Obviously check the oil pump turns before splitting the engine.

Anything else obvious I'm missing?

On the plus side, anybody need some good roads in Spain, just PM me. I'll try and post some video on the tube. Oh my Lordy.

kos11-12

Good luck with the repair ,
let us know what happen.

John McM

It's every owner's nightmare being far from home with a car issue, however don't overthink this and wind yourself up. As per the above post, please post when you have more info.

fasterlaster

Thinking positive for you on this. If there was an obvious dashboard issues causing alert lights all over, perhaps the oil pressure gauge also failed to report accurate pressure (i.e., engine may not have lost oil pressure).

PhatPhlatSix

That's what I thought. In this age of car, does low oil pressure trigger the Alert light?

Harry Apps

Yes!

Railmaster.

If it was My car I would pull ghe DME relay and run the starter and see if it builds oil pressure at the same time as I listen for strange noices from the engine.

And if You are lucky it is just an electrical/ground fault making the instrument play up!

koenig_roland

when i remember correctly, the oil pressure alarm is triggered from a different sender as the oil pressure gauge, but i am not sure about it. I doubt, both senders would fail at the same time...

At my blue car, i have (had) always an issue with oil-temp gauge when it was quite hot and i was at the track. Then, it showed oil-temps at the maximum level (but i am sure, with two big oil-cooler in the front, i have no issue with oil-temps). After several shut-off/shut-on attemps, the oil-temp gaugs showed "normal" values...

Perhaps you have had just an issue with with heat or electrical contact somewhere?!

jgj

One thing that wasn't bothering me on the day but now with the benefit of hindsight might be significant. The oil level indicator that wonderful instrument that we all love to hate and which in my case is normally buried at the zero level whenever I'm driving like everyone else, on that day was hovering around the half full level especially when I was driving on the twisties in the mountains. At the time I thought it might be the altitude or the g forces (😂 with my driving???), but now I wonder.

Could this have been significant?

newsboy

That happened to me only one time while I was driving in 90 degree stop and go driving for an hour. The oil level gauge went up to about to about 2/3rds. Thought it had to do with the oil being very hot, and when stopped
of course your idling, so maybe it was just that.

Vandit

When was the last time you added oil and how much did you add? What was your method for determining it needed oil? You might have potentially hydrolocked the motor with oil (i.e. oil in the cylinders, which doesn't compress, and instead bends rods and creates havoc in the motor).

jgj

To be honest I have added no oil since August when I had the last service done since when I have driven 2000 miles.

RallyeChris

If the oil pump failed, there's a good chance the oil wold collect in the tank and over-fill due to lack of distribution via the oil pump. No oil circulation would also trigger a low oil pressure warning. Just a thought...

Nautilus

Give me a shout if you need any help discussing/dealing with the shop if they don't speak english.

Earlydays

It's important to check the oil on a regular basis....per the factory, oil consumption varies by how the car is driven and it is not abnormal for the car to use 1 liter of oil per 1000 kilometers.