vqsmile

Well, I guess you missed that the only thing the car 'presents' is either nothing (implying that everything is normal and totally ok), or a low oil pressure idiot light and/or an ECU error code of P0524 (which basically means you have next to zero oil pressure).

The trouble is that there is absolutely no articulation in between those two extremes, yet the car most definitely would have spent a good deal of time being driven at ever decreasing levels of oil pressure up until it finally 'presents'. Of course, by that time you could quite possibly have additional valve control malfunctioning issues, with addition associated repair costs, not to even mention outright oil starvation related issues for all metal-on-metal parts throughout the engine.

I sense from your comments that you have more faith in the idiot lights and diag functions within our cars that may be warranted. The factory knows there is a problem, but does nothing proactively; essentially taking advantage of the fact that nothing 'presents' as being wrong with the car until after it is out of warranty, and thus, repair costs fall upon the consumer.

Just to illustrate, the minimum oil pressure at idle is 14 psi, yet my car had a mere 5psi at idle and showed zero symptoms; still ran fine and everything. I tested my OP (just as a precaution) before my Infiniti Elite Extended warranty ran out and was able to catch the gasket failure in my engine within days of being out of warranty coverage. If I hadn't done the test, my car would have eventually failed on me at some time in the future, but I would have had to eat the repair costs then.

By being proactive yourself, you can identify this primary symptom of a gasket failure by simply verifying your oil pressure is still within factory spec. You want to do this because you can't wait until the car degrades further to the point until it FINALLY presents!

slartibartfast

iTrader: (7)

Faith? Not really. But until I near the end of warranty, I'll let Infiniti deal with low oil pressue issues. I have a gen-3 Miata with an "oil pressure gauge". It doesn't get its signal from the sender, it gets its signal from the ECU. That was my bias in mis-understanding what you were doing. I thought you had a factory gauge you were testing against external gauges.

vqsmile

Ahh, ok. I was merely trying to offer two methods of accomplishing an oil pressure measurement, be it longer term monitoring or a single test. There was no intention for it to be a comparison. I just happened to have pics from two different methods on two different cars.

But in the mean time, are you not the least bit concerned that you could be unwittingly driving a car with inadequate oil pressure? I hate the fact that I was blithely flogging on my baby without a clue she was under oiled.

slartibartfast

iTrader: (7)

Only 22k miles. Southeast Texas is flat and crowded so I get few opportunities to flog it.

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

I think the entire point is possibly being missed here by some. How or where you drive the car isn't the determining factor of whether you'll be affected by this issue. If it's starved of oil it will damage the engine. FACT. If the oil pressure is low, it may not trigger an oil pressure light or even display any diagnostic codes. FACT. If you have a car with a VQ engine in it, you are potentially going to face this issue to a lesser or greater degree. The likelihood grows as the car gets older. FACT. Checking your car's oil pressure now regardless of codes or symptoms displayed may alert you to the issue early resulting in less wear and preventing potential catastrophic engine failure. FACT.

Dough1397

What about a combined pressure/temperature gauge? I am not to knowledgeable about what aftermarket gauges exist and which can be used on our cars, but I do have a hunch that a company has thought of this and packaged both sensors together in a single product. Thus I imagine something similar to Option 1 (semi permanent) that simultaneously measures pressure and temperature could be rigged up!

slartibartfast

iTrader: (7)

So, the REAL point is only a fool would NOT permanantly install an oil gauge in a G35/G37/Maxima/Altima.

I like the combined pressure/temp gauge idea. Multiple gauges in one bezel is common in the aircraft biz, surely there's something like that for automobile applications.

vqsmile

Funny you should mention that. This is the very gauge I have installed in another car of mine:

D1-Series Dual Oil Pressure & Oil Temperature Monitor - VEI Systems

Given the unusually high (normal) operating oil pressures for these engine, I'd look into making sure whatever gauge was chosen had an upper pressure range of 150 psi. Otherwise, the 100psi gauges will just peg out at 100.


Yep, pretty much.

See gauge mentioned above. There are also others out there too.

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

Actually, that's not the point I was attempting to make. I was just trying to encourage anyone with an affected engine to check their oil pressure to see if the condition exists and have it fixed before their warranty expires. The gauge is great but not necessary to check oil pressure.

vqsmile

BB, I think we're in total agreement about encouraging an OP measurement to verify it's within spec before warranty coverage ends; no question about it.

You mention "affected engines". Are we totally sure which engines in the "G" line are affected? At what point in production dates did they improve the gasket? If conclusive info is out there, I must have missed it.

In regards to an installed gauge vs. an OP test, the way I see it, a simple one-shot check with a test gauge yields a single data point to determine if it's in spec at a particular time, warranty expiration being the most critical time; no question about that. BUT, how then does one know if and/or when their engine does blow a gasket in the future (these cars are aging) if they don't have an installed gauge for ongoing monitoring? Are annual or quarterly OP rechecks enough? (Who'd want to bother with that?) I think the real question is, regardless of who will eventually pay for repairs, how long of an interval should one be willing to potentially be driving their car with low OP?

Luckily, I feel as though I am in a very fortunate position with regard to OP monitoring, as it is extremely unlikely I should have any further issues now that my gaskets have been changed. That is real peace of mind (i.e. I will undoubtedly remove the installed gauge from my car). However, if I were giving a friend advice on their VQ powered car that hadn't had its gaskets changed, I can't think of why it would be a bad idea to simply suggest they install a gauge and gain the peace of mind of being able to know as soon as any problem starts.

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

Affected engines are ones that have VQ in their designation.

vqsmile

I was thinking that whenever the improved gaskets came out that they would also have changed them on the production line, so when would that have been - 2011, 2012, 2013 ????

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

Could have, but I haven't seen anything definitive that tells me that they ever changed the part. I'm going to work on the presumption that they didn't.

antirice

iTrader: (2)

Checked my oil pressure today.

I used the same Harbor Freight kit like vqsmile, also purchased the glowshift adapter as mentioned.

With the car warmed up, I got

idle: around 28-30psi
2000rpm: around 68-70psi

My car is 2010 G37 with about 54,000 miles on it.

Big thumbs up again for vqsmile, for the extremely detailed DYI with good tips. It helped big time. For anyone who plan to do this, I highly recommend getting a deep wall 27mm socket for the oil sending unit, not necessary but makes the job easier.

I plan to do this everytime I changed oil, which is about every 6 months.

m3clubracer

Thanks blnewt for directing me to this. Couldn't you have used the "T" adapter to mount the AM pressure sending unit instead of the sandwich adapter? BTW I mounted that same PSU to one of my race engines and it died in 4 laps or so. I had to remote mount it. That was back in '02, maybe they have improved the vibration resistance. Probably not. Nice write-up.