Oil Indicator Failure

This got bought up elsewhere recently and appears to be another fairly common problem on the 996. Mine did it very soon after I bought it. It's very worrying the first time it happens but as it turns out it's probably nothing to worry about and a fairly simple fix. So here's how it happens; You will be driving along, everythings to be fine, when out of the blue you get an error flashed up on the instrument display "Oil Indicator Failure" with a little picture of an oil can. You look at the oil pressure gauge which is reading zero and most likely your immediate thought is to pull over and shut off the engine because you think you've lost oil pressure. Wait, why isn't the red oil pressure warning light on? If the oil pressure warning light is on as well please stop straight away!Fortunately the first time this happened to me the gauge started reading again before I could stop and I started thinking it through. Normally the oil pressure is very steady and there must be a very slim chance that I would have anything wrong that would cause a sudden drop in oil pressure then have it immediately pick back up. Maybe if the oil level was low, but I know I checked it on the instrument display before starting the engine and had only checked it with the dipstick the previous weekend. I started to suspect a faulty sender. That evening I looked up how much a new sender would cost and found a parts diagram to find out where it was located. I desided not to look at it that evening so it had to wait a day or two for the weekend. I had the same fault show up a couple more times but it didn't bother me as much as it had done the first time. Come the weekend I opened up the engine compartment and shone my flashlight down the right hand side of the engine to find the sender. It sits about 3/4 of the way down the length of the engine with two terminals sticking up in the air with wires coming off them. The wires terminate in spade connectors which looked filthy dirty so I figured it might be worth pulling the connectors off and cleaning the terminals. Needless to say, after cleaning the terminals with a piece of fine wet & dry and reconnecting the wires the problem went away, at least until the connection gets corroded again. Others have suggested a little dielectric grease on the terminals may help here and that's probably a good idea. Anyhow, here's a photo taken looking from the back down the right hand side of the engine to show the location of the sender. I have circled the sender and you can clearly see the two wires. What you might not be able to see is that the two connectors are slightly different sizes so they will only go on the way they came off. Take a photo of yours or make a note of which color wire was fitted to which terminal before you pull them off. You'll need this because you'll be putting them back on by feel as it's difficult to fit your hand down there and see what your doing at the same time. I hope this helps.

Thanks

My failure message with the oil can icon came on today, as well as the jumpy oil pressure gauge. This post makes allot of sense and will help me sleep better tonight! I am going to clean the sensors this weekend as suggested. Thank You!

I ended up replacing my oil pressure sender (the part shown above) and it has completely fixed the problem. The hexagonal section of the sender is fairly difficult to access with a wrench so a combination of a crow foot and ratchet is required along with a little persistance. You may find it easier to access it from beneath the car if my memery serves correctly. It isn't too difficult to replace and the sender is available here on Pelican and fairly inexpensive for peace of mind.