Oil light during fast corners

[racer_f50]

Hey guys,

I recently found a really fun twisty road to play with the Celica on :D
In some spots it kinda reminds me of those twisty Italian mountain roads you see people driving ferraris on in some vids. i don't think my tires like it as much as i do :P

anyhow... i happened to be going fast through a downhill hairpin turn, and noticed that the Oil indicator light came on. that kinda worried me at first, cuz i've had problems with oil pumps and stuff like that with my previous cars, but then when i was on a straight piece of the road again the light turned off.

i'm guessing the fast cornering caused all the oil to move away from the sensor or something, since when the car is straight again it turns off.

is it pretty normal for this to happen?

[fedezyl]

In the way oil pressure is measured the probable thing is that you may not have full oil on your engine, oil pressure is measured on a presurised line so if the oil pressure light comes on, then the oil pressure is low, that's one of the limitations on wet oil sumps, oil moves around on fast corners and may leave the oil pick up point on the sump with no oil, hence the lack of oil pressure at that point, my advice is to try to keep your oil quantity to full or half full...then you should have no problem.

[nthfinity]

hahahaha.... this takes me back when i had a terrible car

my 89 chevy celebrity used to burn about a quart per 1000 miles.... and my indicator on when to add oil was based on when the oil light came on during cornering. god i dispised that car :-P

[novass]

Like Brembo said, as long as you have enough oil you should be fine.

I remember when I first had my Nova before I put in a fuel cell with a baffle in it, the old tank used to have gas sloshing all over the place. When I accelerated hard the fuel gauge said I had a full tank, but if I slammed on the brakes, the needle pointed to empty LOL

[racer_f50]

thanks for the info guys.

there should be plenty of oil in the engine, i had all the oil leaks fixed right after i bought the car, and i'm assuming they put a full load of oil back in it (at least the little oil dipstick shows that its got enough after about 2,000 miles of driving it so far). i'll get an oil change soon anyways, so then i'll know for sure.

novass, i had a screwy fuel guage on my Grand Prix, when cornering and braking it would fluxuate a lot. kinda annoying.

[Garretts_turbo]

in that old dodge ram i had, whenever i braked hard, the ABS light as well as the oil light came on. this was particularily amusing as my truck did not even come equipped with ABS. i had always wondered about that litle fluke.....meh, its scrap metal by now.....

[caneswell]

Yeah check oil level to make sure. Shouldn't be too much of a problem if it just occasions spirited road use. If you took the car the a track though, maybe a baffled sump would be a good buy. Low oil pressure can damage engines rather quickly!

[hotgemini]

I really can't agree with you guys here. The oil pressure light on all production cars only triggers at VERY low pressure like 3 or 4psi, which is INSUFFICIENT pressure to ensure that the crankshaft is prevented from contacting the main bearings and more probably the Big ends doing the same and spinning a bearing. Particularly while the car is being driven hard and therefore presumably at elevated RPM. You could VERY quickly destroy your engine.

As for what to do about it... Don't just wait for a bloody scheduled service, pop the bonnet and check the oil level for yourself, see if keeping the oil level right at the full mark solves the problem.

[666fast]

It happens.
If it really bugs you, get a oil pan with baffles. It'll keep the oil from sloshing back and forth.

[StanAE86]

I have to agree with Gemini here...I used to roadrace my old car and I'm certain I pulled longer and more g's on the track than you could have pulled off on an open road and I've never ever ever had the oil light come on. If the oil light is on, you're not getting adequate pressure in the oil system. This could be from the oil leaning up on the side of the pan and the pick-up being dry and not sucking up oil (solution is a pan with baffles or a dry sump - but on a regular car in normal driving, even highly spirited driving, you shouldn't need to modify anything). Normally, if you have a full pan of oil, you're okay and the oil light should not come on.

Like Gemini said, NEVER go by what the service guys tell you, NEVER just wait until the next time for service. You should be under the hood checking this stuff for yourself.

On my Subaru, I took the thing into an oil change place (Jiffy Lube) because I'm too lazy these days to do it myself...and when those F'ers were done, the car wouldn't shift and was stuck in the workbay. Turns out, Subaru's automatic trannys use a filter that looks just like the oil filter (easier to change than the classic style where you have to drop the pan), so the filter they changed, was my transmission filter. The lost fluid was enough to make the pressure in the tranny drop enough so that the car wouldn't shift. Had the fukker paid half an ounce of attention, he would have figured out that even though it looks like an oil filter, if the fukking thing is on the transmission, that's not the right one! Most oil service guys are just robots and don't know squat...they see too many cars. You have to be familiar with your own car and not trust the robot service guy to do everything for you.

Good luck.

[itsthepham]

Its not a dry sump lubricated engine - soooo that means all the oil in your pan is loose and just flying all over the place - the same thing with gas - if you throw your car around enough you'll see your gas gauge go up and down. your just messing around with sensors

[itsthepham]

Its not a dry sump lubricated engine - soooo that means all the oil in your pan is loose and just flying all over the place - the same thing with gas - if you throw your car around enough you'll see your gas gauge go up and down. your just messing around with sensors

[hotgemini]

itsthepham: If you don't have a god-damn clue what you're talking about, don't post BS instead.

The fuel level sender is just that, a level guage working on a float inside a tank. The oil pressure guage represents the pressure at or near the output of the oil-pump. So whilst fuel in the tank and oil in the sumpwill both be affected by lateral G-forces, the variation on one guage represents that the float is rising and falling with very little affect on the performance of the car (unless the pick-up is exposed to air), the oil pressure light coming on means that the oil pump pick-up has been exposed, all pressure has been virtually completely lost and bearing damage will very very rapidly occur.

God I get annoyed at mindless fucktards who spout shit all day.

[graywolf624]

While I too agree that this issue is related to low oil level (since you are on the street), I do want to make something clear. While road racing on slicks it is more then a little possible that lateral acceleration will keep oil from actively coating the crank case. The trick most of the vette and camaro owners use is an over fill.. beyond a certain point it would be dry sump time.

On a street in a celica though.. ain't bloody likely.

[hotgemini]

graywolf: It ISN'T about liberally coating the crank case... What matters is the oil supply to the pump via the oil pick-up, this supplies the necessary pressure to ensure there is no crank-bearing contact in the big-end and main bearings.

Your observation does have some merit though, if he's triggering the oil light on the street on street tyres, I suspect that the most likely cause is a low oil level rather than exceeding the design of the factory oil system.