Oil Filter! A feakin Defective Auto Zone STP oil filter is the source of my Oil pressure light woes of Friday and Saturday.

Inga my 1986 245DL suddenly had the oil pressure light popping on during deceleration on Friday night. New Sending unit installed on Saturday and the problem actually got worse (Changed the oil on Wednesday in my driveway by the way). Checked the wiring and it all seemed good (just rewired also) Sought professional today help from my regular mechanic. He does not really like Volvos that much and tends to blame everything on electrical problems at first and then he fixes it anyway. He is closed Saturday thru Monday too, good thing he is a good mechanic (used him for over 25 years).

Bottom line when the oil pressure test unit was hooked up the pressure started out at 40 lbs and steadly dropped to 5 pounds. Turn off the engine and the problem repeated itself 40 lbs and then dropping down to 5. No bad sounds or even sound change in the engine (except for a slight piston slap all the time) He saw some oil seeping out of the oil filter and played a hunch. Let her cool down for a couple of hours and then changed the oil filter out with a new Fram and at startup Inga jumped up to a steady 55 lbs pressure. Ran the car for an hour and was amazed to still see 55 lbs. He stated that most cars had a 5 to 10 lb drop when they got warm. But not Inga with a rock steady 55.

He stated that this was the correct oil filter, that it was installed correctly, and something was plugging it up and causing a back pressure that affected the sending unit. Restricted flow was the most likely culpit. Well $76.00 for piece of mind it was worth every penny.

A bad oil filter, I am going back to Auto Zone and get my $3.00 bucks back.

Never ever heard of this one. Come to think of it never want to hear of it again. Inga makes her first work run in almost 3 years in the morning (lord willing). If you see a silver 245DL closing in the mirror on South Beltway 8, it will just be me and Inga going with the "flow of traffic" which will be around 80 mph unless you want to as we say in Texas "git urself run over".

Regards,

PT