So my truck always had the oil light on but it has good oil, it doesn't make any noises, smoke or leak. About 15k on rebuild from what I understand when I purchased it.

I purchased a second gauge digital gauge that uses PSI or bar and I have it set to bar right now and it's at 0.3 bar pressure.. in PSI mode It's like at 15 psi pressure.. at id le at say 1000 RPM to 1500 RPM It's only at 0.4 for the reading. I read that at the light stays on that there's a short in the oil sending unit wire will my light doesn't cut out when I unplug it so I have an issue there. But wouldn't cause the low oil reading with a different gauge as well .

New gauge pod and oil read out as you can see in the bottom right hand corner.
so What else could cause low oil pressure or minimal oil pressure.

Thanks for any information guys

 

I'd thread in a mechanical pressure gauge and test with that before I did anything further.

 

The truck sits most of the time and I just haven't gotten the mechanical one yet to test.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions on what would be causing low oil pressure besides a restrictive filter or low oil I installed the second gauge and it's only reading at 5 PSI at idle has my concern..
Thanks guys.

 

If you rebuilt the engine and you had the crank turned (machined) but then used standard sized bearings for the rods or the mains.......then you will have low oil pressure.

If you have a B2000 block, and you used a B2200 head gasket, that will lower your oil pressure......due to the fact that the correct head gasket needs to be used for a B2000 or a B2200 block. The B2200 block has an oil passage restrictor for the oil passage that feeds oil to the cylinder head, the B2000 block does not......the head gasket for the B2000 engine has it's oil restrictor built into the head gasket.

 

Are you using 10W-40 or some synthetic oil???

I'm not so sure that 5 psi at idle is that low, old VWs run low oil pressure at idle. And there's not much stress or wear at idle.

Typical guidelines for engines are like 10 psi for each 1000 rpm, so 20 psi at 2000 rpm, 40 psi at 4000 rpm. I'd consider that most important.

 

I use 10w30 half syn blend. Thanks for the info. Not sure parts used on rebuild as I didn't rebuild it.