I hope that someone has a good answer for this problem that I am experiencing. I have a freshly rebuilt 3VZE engine with the Downey cermaic coated headers and full cat-back 2-1/2 stainless exhaust. The motor has cams, porting, etc. All emissions are connected with cat and everything else and no check engine light. My point is that everything seems to be absolutely perfect even oil pressure is perfect with mechanical gauge.
I have gone thru the wiring harness numerous times and this will be the third oil pressure sender that I am replacing within a 2 week time?
The second sender went to zero ohms and burned out the oil pressure gauge.

So I installed a new gauge and sender and low and behold another sender dead.

Anyone have any ideas ? Could the heat from the downey headers be killing these ? The wiring from the gauge to the sender is clean with no shorts or problems. This last sender is open no matter what pressure. I should mention that I am using a Napa part has anyone had any problems with them? I am going to try one more sender from NAPA as they warranty replace them but at $50 a gauge I am gonna be upset if this one pops from going zero to ground.

I know, I know don't trust the dash gauge but I would like to keep the factory dash and add an additional oil pres/temp and trans temp gauge in addition to the factory stuff. It would drive me nuts to have a gauge or blank there that doesnt do anything.

 

Welcome to Yotatech!!!

I know that on my motor(22R-E) if you mix up the SR5 sender with the "dummy" light sender bad things happen(ie, you kill your gauge). Don't know if that condition could happen with the V6's...

 

Yea it could happen, but I am using the pressure sender with the gauge. It worked perfectly for the first 3 days of use. The fourth day after starting the truck it's dead.

 

Hmmmmm, dunno. You could try insulating the sender with heat wrap or silicon boot, maybe.

 

I may try that, or at least zip tie a sheet of aluminum to protect the oil sender. I can't believe that nobody else has had this problem. I am sure that many 3vze's have downey's ceramic coated headers. Just not sure if this is an issue with aftermarket NAPA senders.. I believe it is a sankei sender not sure what factory uses though.

 

Ok so after 2 gauges and 4 sending units. The last sender came in slightly different looking. I fabricated a aluminum heat sheild for it and it seemed to correct the problem. It has been about 2 weeks and easily 500mi in really hot/humid conditions and still seems to work properly. Who knows.... but it seems to work.

 

Cool, you should post some pics of what you made to illistrate to others of the issue.

 

Yes I definately will take some tomorrow....

 

Ok so here are the pics of the mod, I should have mentioned that I do have an excellent circle ground system installed in the vehicle and it does make all the gauges more accurately. Anyhow here is the pics that I promised and sorry that the quality sucks...

 

Cool!!