Electronic dash boards are always suspect. There are small computing
elements everywhere nowadays. I notice mine reads once a while. And at
startup to begin with. If cold - low gas, low oil, low battery. After
the engine warms up or I drive a half mile or a full one the meters
re-measure and there I go. Not all that bad. Not low on anything.

So it is often the first reading that fakes one out - taking it at an
odd time.

Martin

On 2/22/2017 10:29 AM, Garrett Fulton wrote:
On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 1:43:44 PM UTC-5, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi folks,

Quick question. Many cars from the 1980s used to rust badly. Sometime in the 1990s, this changed -

and quite suddenly. Does anyone know what specific changes were made to
the paint composition and

surface treatment? I can only find vague allusions in most articles.

Thanks,

Chris

Here's how cheap Ford is. About 15 yrs. ago I was reading the latest Popular Mechanics

auto advice column. A guy wrote in with a concern about his oil
pressure reading in his new Ford F-150.

He said he had noticed when it was started cold, the oil pressure always
came up to the exact same level

and never decreased once the engine got warm, as his previous pickup had
done. The pressure always remained

at the exact same place no matter engine temperature or RPM. The auto
advice guy at PM said on his year/model

of pickup, Ford had replaced the pressure transmitter with a pressure
switch with a fixed resistance.

When the switch closed, it would always deflect the oil pressure needle
to the same location.

In other words, an idiot light. As far as I've seen, no other auto
manufacturer ever pulled one like that.

Saved them what? $1.50 a truck? So, here you are doing 70 on the
interstate all day and one or more cam bearings

are starting to go. From personal experience, that's always a gradual
decrease of oil pressure. By the time the

oil pressure gauge on your P.O.S. Ford pickup drops to zero and the
backup idiot light comes on, the engine has

been operating way too long on insufficient oil pressure and is likely
already trashed. A guy I worked with had

a new Ford pickup. I read him the column and he said,"That's just the
way my truck acts!". Now I don't know

if they still practice this world class chicken^&*(, but I've had my
last Ford.