OK, I live in Kentucky. It's been in the teens for the past month, and we are experiencing a bad ice storm that has knocked out power to about a million homes. Anyhow. I drove home last night from work about 11pm. Everything was peachy. Went to sleep. Got up at 10 to go to class. Hopped in my 2003 SS 6.0 with 102K miles and fired her up. Truck needs an oil change, but there's ice on the ground and I have to wait til it thaws to change it. So like I said, I fired the truck up and heard DING DING DING DING DING... expecting it to say "change oil" well, DING DING DING DING DING DING continued and the message center said "LOW OIL PRESSURE". I looked up and my oil pressure was at the top of the 0 pressure red mark. I freaked out and shut her down. Popped the hood and checked the oil. Full. Dirty, but full. So I freaked out and called my dad. After a couple of minutes he talked me into firing it back up. So I started it back up and listened for knocking etc. The same thing happened again, the oil guage went from the bottom and moved about 1/16 of an inch to the top of the 0 oil pressure red mark. It never moved OUT of the red. I let it idle for a few seconds, listening for valve chatter from lack out oil. Nothing. The only noise the truck made was the squeeky belt that always happens when its cold out. So after about 30 seconds, the truck still sounds normal. Exhaust sounds normal, drivers side sounds normal, pass side sounds normal. I let it idle for 5 minutes. All the while the message center is going BONKERS!!!! DING DING DING DING DING DING Low oil pressure, Danger will robinson danger!!. At this point I get into the truck and decide to take it around the block. So I get in and ease it out of the drive way. Around the block I go. All the while, driver's side window down and it's like 4 degrees out. Head out the window, listening. No noise other than what's normal. Give it a little gas. Still DING DING DING DING the entire time. It's driving me crazy at this point. At this point I figure that maybe there's some condensation in the oil pressure guage line that has frozed and is keeping the oil from reaching the guage. After 10 minutes of driving the truck is fine... but still no guage. I gave it about 3/4 throttle and the guage immediately shoots up to 60 lbs of oil pressure. The dinging stopped and it's been fine ever since.


Any ideas on what the heck happened? I'm baffled.

 

does it have normal oil pressure now on a cold start? maybe you have some water in your oil or condensation and it froze the pressure sensor. its on the back of the block , id get a creeper with a hot blanket and check your oil.

my frist motor lq9 had a similar issue. went to start up and ding ding. no oil press. no sounds nothing funky. i didnt want to screw anything up but got it to the dealer and it had spun cam bearings and the motor was poo. got a free one but still sucked. sometime the oil pressure sensor can go but thats about it. oil pumps dont fail very often .

 

Yes sir. Normal oil pressure. Hasn't done it since. I will let it sit all night in the freezing cold weather and see what it does in the morning. I need to just change the oil. I made the mistake of going with valvoline synthetic this time instead of my normal mobile one gold cap.

I was thinking along the same lines as you. I live 5 miles from work. I started the truck last night and drove straight home and turned it off. The truck gets up to 210 in that time frame, but I don't think the trip was long enough to burn off all of the contaminates like condensation that build up in the oil on short trips.

 

Thinking optimisticly, I'd say that the problem was with the sender or the gauge...the 03+'s have been known to have gauge problems with the stepper motors. Not sure if the message center warning gets it's signal from the sender on the engine or the gauge in the cluster though...

 

You got some ***** running that thing when the gauge reads 0! I wouldn't run mine until I could determine for sure it was a bad gauge.

 

sounds like a frozen oil pressure sensor to me also.......

 

if the stepper motor goes, it doesn't send a message to the DIC. I'd say it was the sensor.

 

been a couple days and it's just fine. Damn ice.

 

You really need to change the oil, Esspecially at those tempratures....

 

Changed the oil tonight. Mobil-1 5w-30 and an AC Delco Filter.