Replacement oil pressure gauge reading backwards

[iGhost]

I recently took my instrument cluster out to clean up my indiglows a little bit and of course in the process I broke the needle on the electrical gauge. So I ordered a replacement OE oil pressure/electrical gauge pod and installed it and while the electrical needle reads normal, the oil pressure needle seems to almost read in reverse. When I turn the ignition power on the needle goes nearly all the way to the top and then when I start the motor it reads all the way at the bottom. Everything read as normal before I started messing with it.

I've heard this gauge reads in more of an on/off kind of way rather than reading actual pressure so I'm wondering if different years of 2nd gen Probes had different resistors on the back of the needles and maybe thats what causing it to read incorrectly.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

[BLUEnoEQ]

It sounds like you have the 95 and up gauge which just tells that you have pressure, not how much. The sender for that gauge is just an on off switch.

[iGhost]

It sounds like you have the 95 and up gauge which just tells that you have pressure, not how much. The sender for that gauge is just an on off switch.

My car is a 96, so do you know if the gauge for a 93/94/95 would be different than a 96/97?

[diosnoche]

Yes its a different gauge for 93,94,95; which reads actual oil pressure.

96-97 is like on the MX-6; its only and on/off switch because in the MX-6 it only has an oil warning light. That's how Ford saved money in the later years of production for the Probe, the oil pressure sending unit cost something like $300 plus to replace, where as the oil warning light switch, which is what is in the 95-96 probes but hooked up to the oil gauge instead of a warning light, cost like $20

[iGhost]

Yes its a different gauge for 93,94,95; which reads actual oil pressure.

96-97 is like on the MX-6; its only and on/off switch because in the MX-6 it only has an oil warning light. That's how Ford saved money in the later years of production for the Probe, the oil pressure sending unit cost something like $300 plus to replace, where as the oil warning light switch, which is what is in the 95-96 probes but hooked up to the oil gauge instead of a warning light, cost like $20

So would swapping resistors from one gauge to the other fix this issue, or am I going to have to locate an actual gauge from a 96 model?

[diosnoche]

You could try I guess. All I know is the resistance on the 96-97 is 20 ohms and the oil switch triggers at 6 psi

[iGhost]

It's really hard to find out what year these things are coming out of as they all seem to have the same part number OP-0147-005 on them regardless of the year.

[BLUEnoEQ]

Wouldn't it be an upgrade if you found a 93-94 sender and put that in there? That's what I'd try to do, lemons to lemonade.

[iGhost]

Wouldn't it be an upgrade if you found a 93-94 sender and put that in there? That's what I'd try to do, lemons to lemonade.

I wondered about that. Would that work? I assume its a direct signal from the sending unit to the gauge and doesn't communicate with the ECU?

[BLUEnoEQ]

One wire, no way to mess that up. Finding an older sending unit though

[iGhost]

One wire, no way to mess that up. Finding an older sending unit though

I see one on ebay that claims to be OEM but says it works for 93 - 95 models with both the 2.0 and 2.5. Do both motors really use the same sending unit?

[diosnoche]

Airtex 1s6654

yes its the same, have a look

search item # 252899158416

[iGhost]

Ok, so I've definitely spent more money than I needed to on this but what I ended up finding was an instrument cluster out of a 97 with the 4 cylinder and I took the battery and oil gauges out and put them in mine and it works normally. So there you have it. I won't go into details on everything else I bought that I didn't use but lets just say that at some point I could convert it over the older style sending unit and gauge cluster. Thanks for the help guys.

[jus nyce]

Are the sending units for the gas gauge and temp side different on 93-95 than 96-97? I did the same thing as the OP, but broke the opposite side. the temp goes all the way up as soon as you turn on the car.

[SuperSquid]

and here I thought you had put a 93 sending unit with a 94 cluster....I had the fun during a motor swap of not switching the sending unit over from the old engine to the new one....and my oil gauge would read ok then drop when I revved the engine...whereas it was actually going up in pressure. Swapped over the sending unit and gauge works fine.