A couple days ago I saw my oil pressure gauge move suddenly out of the corner of my eye so I started watching it. Sure enough, 10 minutes later the reading went from 5 bar to 0. It stayed there for a very scary half second and then went quickly back up to 5. Since then this seems to happen every hour of driving or so (I'm watching it all the time now). There is never any noise or smoke when this happens and the idiot light has never come on, nor has the on board computer registered any fault. The oil level according to the on board computer has not changed either.

I've read other posts and it sounds like the oil pressure sending unit which many people have reported as a common point of failure for the 996TT. The question is, until I get a new sending unit installed should I park the car because it could possibly be something else? I can't see why I would actually lose all oil pressure and then suddenly get it all back a split second later. I would also expect that if there really was no oil pressure the light would have come on or I would have heard some strange noises.

I've read about metal shavings in the oil pan clogging the intake for the oil pump, but the car has only 20k miles on it and that seems pretty far fetched. Honestly I'd feel better if the gauge just went to zero and stayed there so I could have my indy put a mechanical gauge on it to verify the problem, but it happens very infrequently - but just enough to scare the bejesus out of me when it happens.

Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

My turbo did the same thing. It was the oil sending unit.

 

Same here. Kinda scary.

 

yep me too...was the sending unit

 

Did you ever get this resolved? My car started doing this all of the sudden. What is the typical cost for this repair?

 

Terrifying isn't it? The fix was only $56 for the part and about 2 hours of labor because the throttle body has to come out. I got the sending unit changed and an oil change from my indy mechanic for about $350.

He also showed me how the electronics around it work. There are two posts on the sending unit. The unit is grounded to the frame and the current through the posts indicates what the gauge and light should do. So one post is an on/off - if current goes through, there is some pressure and the light is off, the other post is a variable resistance so the amount of current that goes through indicates the level of the gauge. So as long as they don't both read 0 pressure, you're fine. This is a common source of failure for these cars.

 

good ol porsche engineering... mine has been out for a year (or more) - not worth worrying about (or fixing)

- chuck