After trying to trouble shoot a problematic water temperature gauge issue and inoperative oil pressure gauge, I found the problem to be quite bizarre. When I was looking very closely at the temperature gauge to see if the needle moved at all to indicate the gauge might be working, but inaccurate, I noticed that the oil pressure gauge needle was under the pin it was supposed to rest on which prevented the needle from rising. So I took off the gauge face and spun the needle back to rest on top of the resting pin, fired up the car and the oil pressure needle shot up to about 60PSI. It wouldn't vary when I revved the engine, so I thought it was still problematic, but once the engine got up to operating temperature and so did the oil, the oil pressure dropped down at idle.

So I was able to fix my oil pressure gauge issue without pulling out my hair. In fact, the gauge has not worked for 50K miles because I noticed that a previous mechanic had documented it on the repair bill when the shop did the head gasket. That shop did not know why the gauge was inoperative and obviously could not fix it. I love that this DYI guy did better than a pro on this test.

I wonder if maybe the needle got spun around when the gauge cluster was being mishandled during the CD player installation. That's a reasonable instance the gauge cluster would have been removed and why the remover would not have paid much attention to the needle being spun around to rest under the stop pin. Easy fix, but would have been a nightmare to diagnose had I not stumbled onto it by shear observation.

Hope everyone gets an easy J body fix like that too someday!

Usually happens with a bad oil pressure sending unit or a bad connection behind the dash. Then you have to take the glass cover off and reset the needle. This actually happens a lot on sunbirds for some reason.




On the inside my car looks like a fighter jet.

Yeah that can happen when some electrical stuff is unhooked,and or wires touched and or grounded it moves the needle backwards under the resting peg.My mother in laws 98 malibu would do that (cheap car) but,had to remove clear to lift over to fix.Glad you fixed it in a quick way.