oil pressure

[B0LLIKS]

as we all know, on a MK3-3.5, the oil pressure gauge has no bearing on the actual pressure in the engine, its just a display, how do i know if the pressure is dropping because of a problem, just wait for a loud rattle i suppose as there is no oil light either.

[LukeBird]

Surely it would show less pressure than is normal? Even if it is not reading any units and would be impossible to tell by how much it had dropped, it would show a decrease in pressure?

[MX-5 Lazza]

LukeBird said:

Surely it would show less pressure than is normal? Even if it is not reading any units and would be impossible to tell by how much it had dropped, it would show a decrease in pressure?

Nope. All MX5s from late Mk1 (around 96 I think) have dummy on/off gauge. It's little more than an alternative to a light, in fact I'm not sure it even indicates that there is any oil pressure...

[B0LLIKS]

MX-5 Lazza said:

LukeBird said:

Surely it would show less pressure than is normal? Even if it is not reading any units and would be impossible to tell by how much it had dropped, it would show a decrease in pressure?

Nope. All MX5s from late Mk1 (around 96 I think) have dummy on/off gauge. It's little more than an alternative to a light, in fact I'm not sure it even indicates that there is any oil pressure...

yep thats right, even if the engine had no oil in, it would still show oil pressure. seems odd in a 'sports' car not to have some true indication of oil pressure.

[MX-5 Lazza]

Although it's a sportscar it's also a high volume mass market car so has to be all things to all people. A lot of the new owners of the early cars complained to the dealers that that funny gauge in th middle of the dash kept jumping around so Mazda addressed the problem by fitting a dummy gauge.

[LukeBird]

MX-5 Lazza said:

LukeBird said:

Surely it would show less pressure than is normal? Even if it is not reading any units and would be impossible to tell by how much it had dropped, it would show a decrease in pressure?

Nope. All MX5s from late Mk1 (around 96 I think) have dummy on/off gauge. It's little more than an alternative to a light, in fact I'm not sure it even indicates that there is any oil pressure...

Yeah, I was aware that it's not a proper pressure gauge, but I thought it may well read some useful information even if it didn't show the actual oil pressure at anytime.
Sorry about that OP.

[Mazdamender]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Although it's a sportscar it's also a high volume mass market car so has to be all things to all people. A lot of the new owners of the early cars complained to the dealers that that funny gauge in th middle of the dash kept jumping around so Mazda addressed the problem by fitting a dummy gauge.

It was also mainly down to penny pinching by ford,plus a lot more has the mk's moved on and they got worse with cutting corners,and shows on repairing them over the years,especially on the Mk 2 1.8's,the after market engines for this model is big ,for one reason of the false gauge and the other being that all the work on the engine for the replacment for the Mk 1 was done on the head, so eats oil,owners thing the oil is ok because of the gauge,no oil,engine pops,(1.6 version is ok?)and thats way the Mk 2 run did not last to long before the 2.5 vvt came into play because of the early problems,but then the body work suffered even more on the 2.5's.
I could go on,but i won't,20 odd years of working on these great little cars,you tend to pick up on where the penny pinching is happening.