Just a quart low, It's no big deal.....
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:53 am
I'm sure this will be very obvious to most of you, but I just recently (yesterday in fact) realized how big a deal running a quart of oil low really is.
All of my previous vehicles only had idiot lights in them, so I was really happy when I saw the astro had an oil pressure guage in it. But I always wondered if it was reading right because it was shakey when idling. I was driving the other day and just happened to check the oil guage when I was coming to a stop. The guage dropped all the way to zero PSI! Worried, I kept watching the guage and every time I would stop moderately hard, the guage would drop to zero. If I put the brakes on lightly, the guage would read fine. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. IDIOT! the oil pickup is at the rear of the engine, I must be low on oil. Sure enough, I was a quart low. I added a quart, and now it reads fine. Imagine that!!
Then I started thinking. It only dropped to zero for a second, but at idle speed, 1 second is roughly 100 crankshaft rotations without oil pressure- just residual oil. Throw in some rush hour traffic... Yep. It's no wonder none of my cars lasted more than a couple years.In the past (before the astro), I would regularly run a qt low, and once I even noticed it was 2 qts low. I didn't think much of it. Hey 3 qts is better than 0 qts right? But then I've never had an oil pressure guage to "show" me the damage I was doing.
Just thought I would share my lesson learned the hard way.... Keep an eye on your oil level Darn it!
All of my previous vehicles only had idiot lights in them, so I was really happy when I saw the astro had an oil pressure guage in it. But I always wondered if it was reading right because it was shakey when idling. I was driving the other day and just happened to check the oil guage when I was coming to a stop. The guage dropped all the way to zero PSI! Worried, I kept watching the guage and every time I would stop moderately hard, the guage would drop to zero. If I put the brakes on lightly, the guage would read fine. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. IDIOT! the oil pickup is at the rear of the engine, I must be low on oil. Sure enough, I was a quart low. I added a quart, and now it reads fine. Imagine that!!
Then I started thinking. It only dropped to zero for a second, but at idle speed, 1 second is roughly 100 crankshaft rotations without oil pressure- just residual oil. Throw in some rush hour traffic... Yep. It's no wonder none of my cars lasted more than a couple years.In the past (before the astro), I would regularly run a qt low, and once I even noticed it was 2 qts low. I didn't think much of it. Hey 3 qts is better than 0 qts right? But then I've never had an oil pressure guage to "show" me the damage I was doing.
Just thought I would share my lesson learned the hard way.... Keep an eye on your oil level Darn it!