Oil Pressure Switches for Dummies

Oil Pressure Light

Our staffers don't get over to Leaf Group's ItStillRuns.com very much unless they're following the trail of clueless freelancers who ply – or, more correctly, plied – their trade at eHow.com, which is where all the content at ISR came from in the first place. So it should come as no surprise that one of the kids turned up a new post by long-since forgotten contributor Marcus Baker at that particular niche, in which a DotD we hadn't thought about for four years suddenly reappearsed, failing to answer some poor schmuck's question: "Will an Oil Pressure Switch Cause a Car to Not Start?"

The answer, as far as we can tell, is pretty consistent: "No." We can find no reference anywhere to a consumer vehicle that will not start when the oil pressure is below some standard, for a simple reason: until the engine is running, you can't measure oil pressure! Baker, unfortunately, couldn't seem to figure that out.

No, Marcus burned through several hundred words to explain what an oil pressure switch is supposed to do:

"...send a signal to the oil pressure light..."

...and misinforming about oil pressure gauges, saying that,

"...some automobiles also have a gauge which the oil pressure switch can inform of the vehicle's current oil pressure levels [sic]..."

...which is inaccurate, because the oil pressure is monitored by an oil pressure sender, not an oil pressure switch. That's all before babbling semi-coherently about replacing an oil pressure switch (use a "reputable mechanic ") .

Our problem with the post? Besides the excessive verbiage and the misinformation about oil pressure gauges, Marcus failed to answer the question. Unfortunately, some even less competent "content editor" didn't seem to notice this failing, and the post by our Dumbass of the Day has been floating around the internet for eight long years. Duh.

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