[Sniff]

Originally Posted by Autoban

I used to work for VDO and was the Supervisor in charge of the production for these sensors in the late '70s (so I made probable a lot of the sensors we are using these days). Knowing how they are made my first guess is that the wire on the internal resistor is starting to wear through and has some shorts that make the gauge jump around. It is a variable resistor and I don't remember the resistor value specification in 1 Bar increments for these senders, but if you can find the values you can test your gauge.
Buy cheap fixed resistors of the correct values and connect them (with clips) between the wire of the sender unit in the engine compartment and ground. Start with the 0 bar resistor and then check your gauge (with ignition on) to see if it reads close to 0 bar. Repeat the steps in 1 bar increments all the way to 5 bar. If your gauge is way off or jumps around, it's the gauge. If your gauge reads fine, the sender has to be replaced.

Juergen

Juergen,

My oil pressure (druck) gauge is not jumping around. It stays pegged at 0. I thought I ruled out the gauge being bad by removing the wire from the oil pressure sender. When I did this, it pegged to 5. When I grounded the wire, it pegged to 0. This is the test that has been referred to in multiple threads on the topic. What I'm trying to find out is how to determine whether my oil pressure sender is working. It's somewhat involved to remove that thing and I don't want to do it if I don't need to. I've read about testing the sender's resistance while the engine is running but wanted to get Walt's opinion.