After our journey into North Cascades National Park Amanda and I decided to stay at an AirBnB in Mount Vernon for a few days. A small cottage on a farm not too far from town. We needed a few days to rest up before heading across the bay to Olympic National Park. Get some laundry done and get everything in order.
But some time to relax was not in the cards. On the way back from North Cascades I noticed that my oil pressure gauge stopped working. It was reading zero pressure. No Check Engine or Oil lights came on though. I was a bit confused by that because I figured a warning light would be triggered if the sensor had failed.
The engine sounded fine and the temperature gauge was still showing normal temperatures. I was fairly certain that the gauge itself was the issue and that the engine was still being supplied with the necessary amount of lubrication.
But I didn’t want to just leave it like that and make assumptions. If I was wrong and the oil pressure wasn’t what it was supposed to be then the engine would have some serious problems. We had a long way to drive. And we were heading to a place that didn’t have many service options available.
So I started calling around to different mechanics to see if they could help me out. But all of them told me the same thing. They were booked out for weeks and wouldn’t be able to help me.
That’s the thing when you’re on the road. Unless you have a catastrophic failure and need to get towed somewhere no one is going to have the time to help you. It’s frustrating and it’s a bit scary, to be honest. So I started trying to figure out how I was going to fix it myself.
It seemed simple enough. I just needed to unscrew the sensor and replace it with a new one. The issue was getting to the sensor in the first place. It wasn’t easily accessible from the top of the engine bay. So the options were taking a wheel off and contorting my body to get to the sensor or removing the passenger seat and the paneling that separates the cab from the engine.
I decided on the second option. Figured if I was going to do this I might as well be able to see what I am working on.
The chair and the paneling actually were fairly simple to remove and it gave me access to the entire backside of the engine bay. It’s amazing actually. The entire engine sits six inches from my legs the entire time I’m driving and I don’t feel any of the heat coming off of it. The insulation works fairly well.
I removed the old sensor and replaced it first. The car equivalent to blowing into the Nintendo cartridge and sticking it back in. I figured it was worth a shot. Started up the car and the gauge did move. All the way to the high end and then back down to zero again. Fine, it didn’t work but at least I now knew the gauge itself was working.
Good thing was that the Autozone in town had the part I needed. So I drove over there and picked it up. I had to wait for the car to cool down so I was just sitting there in the van for 45 minutes waiting to install the new part. The place looked like a bomb had gone off. It was pretty nerve-racking.
I started up the car after making the repair and the gauge didn’t budge at first. I was disappointed. But then the gauge ticked up and it showed the oil pressure was in the normal range. A sigh of relief. If the repair didn’t work my only option was to drive back to Colorado without knowing what my oil pressure was. A gamble for sure.
The experience was certainly a tense one but it’s made me more confident in making minor repairs and doing maintenance myself. I won’t be opening up the engine any time soon but I’m seeing that a car is more like a computer than I originally realized.
You can replace these periphery parts and it’s mostly just a plug-and-play. As long as you take your time and are careful to replace things the way you originally found them. I am thinking I will take on the spark plugs once I get back to Colorado. Maybe the brakes too.