oil gauge fluctuating for no apparant reason

[leerixone]

hi all, im new here and I looked at the posts logs and i wasn't able to find anything about this topic, so if the problem has already been discussed elsewhere i do apologize, please direct me to the thread.

my problem is this:
out of nowhere my oil gauge began fluctuating the day before yesterday.
I will be driving along and all of a sudden my oil gauge will drop all the way down, and the check engine oil light will come on, and then within seconds it shoots right back up to normal and the light goes off.
I checked my oil and its fine, its at a good level and its relatively healthy.
i googled the heck out of this issue but came up with nothing,
a friend of mine suggested an issue with a fuse but all my fuses seem fine.

on a possibly related note, my gas gauge is weird too,
when i put gas in my truck it doesn't register on the gauge for a while.
sometimes it registers immediately and sometimes it can take a half an hour.
and when it does register its not always accurate, it will tell me its at a quarter tank when i know it full.
my second gauge, (the one on the truck ceiling, the one that tells you how many miles you can travel until you are empty) does the same thing.
this has been going on for a couple of years but i always just ignored it because it wasn't that big of a deal to me, because the gauge's always balance out after a while.
but now I'm beginning to wonder if the oil gauge situation is related and if so, what next?

if anybody has any input on these things i would greatly appreciate it,
thanks

 

[leerixone]

Help, I need an opinion, any will do....lol

I know its only been a few days since I initially posted this question,
and my issue may not be very critical, but if ANYBODY has ANY information whatsoever,
or as much as an opinion or even an educated guess, I would would really appreciate it,
once again, thank you all for considering my question.

 

[ELVATO]

What year is your Expy? Also, do you leave your keys in the ignition when you fuel up?

 

[leerixone]

Thanks for the relply

My truck is a 1999 expedition.
As far as leaving the keys in it, yeah sometimes I do that, but not too often, and when i do the results are the same,

 

[ELVATO]

Oh, figured I'd ask. I know it was happening to some of the 04-08 F150s, where leaving keys in the ignition while fueling up resulted in weird gas guage readings.

 

[leerixone]

Thanks for the relply

i appreciate the info, but im not really sure thats what it is in this case,
thanks again though

 

[davesexplorer]

Well for the oil gauge, there is a sensor located on your engine relative that gauge. I would guess that the sensor is/going bad or is loose. I believe it is located near your oil filter. Worst case scenario your oil pump is going bad or something else is occurring and you are actually loosing oil pressure.

Assuming this may be unrelated to the above problem, you could have an issue with your fuel sending unit, not with the pump itself but with the float. With an older vehicle or one with high mileage it's not uncommon to have to replace it. I haven't had to do it, but I did the whole unit on my 88 mustang, I had to drop the tank down and replace the entire sending unit with the new float.

I hope this helps some.

 

[leerixone]

thanks

thanks for all the info,
do you know of a way to tell if that actually is the prob for sure, like a test of some sort i could perform to confirm what the problem may be?

 

[Jsomedaysoon]

mine's doing the same thing

my oil guage just started doing the fluctuating thing like you're talking about. There is no patern to it at all. I asked a friend of mine that works at ford and he says there is a technical service bulliten that says the wires going to the oil pressure sending unit can get chaffed by the drain chute coming from the oil filter. They recomend cutting a little chunk out of the chute and putting it back. I took mine out completely and that didnt solve the problem so i'm wondering now if it did some permenant damage to the wires. I'm going to change the sending unit soon just because its cheap and could be a possible cause i'll let you know if that improves the situation.

 

[98EXPY 5-0]

When my old Dodge did that, it ended up being the sending unit for the oil pressure gauge.