KYEdge
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2008
- Messages
- 39
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
- Location
- Owensboro, KY
- Vehicle Year
- 2002
- Make / Model
- Ford
- Engine Size
- 3.0
- Transmission
- Automatic
I have had trouble with this every since I bought my truck. I have had the gauge replaced. I even had a bad alternator and thought that might be the problem, after 4 alternators (it took that many to get a good one... Autozone remans are crap, I finally got a new one from my mechanic when I had the cam sensor replaced) I decided that wasn't the cause. After over two years of research I have narrowed it down to a bad ground.
With my truck it only happens after it is really hot. A long trip when it is cold out (1+ hour) will cause the gauge to flicker like crazy until I shut the engine off and let it cool down for a while. If I just shut it down for a few minutes it will be fine until another few minutes of driving and then it starts again. A short trip while it is really hot out (say 20-30 minutes at 90+°) will cause the same oil pressure gauge flicker. When it happens the truck does feel to run a bit more rough than usual at idle, but smooths out and runs like a top once the RPMs get above idle.
I know there are others out there with this exact same problem, because a Google search turns up results on a few other forums with the exact same symptoms.
The final nail in the coffin though was when I noticed I was getting some intermittent noise on certain FM radio stations. So I flipped over to AM and lo and behold I am also getting noise on AM stations that seems to correspond to the engine RPMs. The FM noise is very rare really, and when it happens all I have to do is shut off the truck and restart and it tends to go away, but that alone tells me that it isn't environmental interference.
So it has to be a bad ground somewhere. The next step is trying to figure out exactly which ground it is.
With my truck it only happens after it is really hot. A long trip when it is cold out (1+ hour) will cause the gauge to flicker like crazy until I shut the engine off and let it cool down for a while. If I just shut it down for a few minutes it will be fine until another few minutes of driving and then it starts again. A short trip while it is really hot out (say 20-30 minutes at 90+°) will cause the same oil pressure gauge flicker. When it happens the truck does feel to run a bit more rough than usual at idle, but smooths out and runs like a top once the RPMs get above idle.
I know there are others out there with this exact same problem, because a Google search turns up results on a few other forums with the exact same symptoms.
The final nail in the coffin though was when I noticed I was getting some intermittent noise on certain FM radio stations. So I flipped over to AM and lo and behold I am also getting noise on AM stations that seems to correspond to the engine RPMs. The FM noise is very rare really, and when it happens all I have to do is shut off the truck and restart and it tends to go away, but that alone tells me that it isn't environmental interference.
So it has to be a bad ground somewhere. The next step is trying to figure out exactly which ground it is.