Read the thread, seemed some uncertainty about the 95 non tach oil gauge, good to go or stick with the 92 oil gauge?

 

If you are installing an oil sender and not an oil switch the use the 92 gauge and jump the resister.
If you are staying with the oil switch then use the 92 or the 95 gauge and do not jump the resister.

 

If I use a switch, 95 gauge and no jumper, that's stock configuration aka on/ off no real reading.

Warren561, mentioned using a sender, 96 non tach oil gauge internals, in his 96 tach cluster and it behaved as a real gauge. You mention your 95 non tach oil gauge internals were different, compared to a 95 tach cluster gauge and fully swept during a bench test. Does that not suggest the 95 non tach oil gauge should work?

 

Sounds like it would but as I said my 95 F150 tachometer oil gauge had one less coil and you need all of the coils to sweep to the high side.

I have about 4 or 5 tachometer clusters (93-96) laying around but have never check any of them.

I used the whole 92 truck tachometer cluster in my 94 F53 when changing clusters to a tachometer cluster. When converting my 95 F150 that already had a tachometer cluster in it from the factory to a real gauge I used a 92 oil gauge as the 95 oil gauge would only go to half scale. I used a 1989 truck oil sender in both units.

 

My truck is a 95 non tach cluster, think I'll give this a try, see what happens.

 

Confirmation, success, 95 instrument cluster with no tach, untouched other than resistor bypassed, oil sender installed. Oil gauge functions as a real oil gauge should.

 

96' tach cluster, bypass resistor, old style oil pressure sender: will not read as a real gauge at all, correct? Not even sweep halfway, just "ON/OFF", correct?

 

That's the theory evolving within this thread.
Warren561, dealt with a 96 truck with tach, modification appeared to not work. Swapped oil gauge unit from a non tach 96 truck, into his tach equipped cluster, and it then worked correctly.

 

I might be able to offer some input on this. After I did "the mod", my low end on the stock gauge was O, in normal, and the high end was M. Noticed when the engine was warm, and cruising at 55, the needle dropped to O. That bothered me. I broke out the multimeter, all grounds and connections are good. So I replaced the oil sender (AutoZone duralast brand PS4, 11.99 stamped Ford, think about that). New sender seemed to make the gauge more responsive, yet at cruise, the needle dropped to O. When I'd accelerate, the needle wouldn't climb, until I'd near 2000 rpm. Then it head towards M, but not always reaching it.
That bothered me, why was the needle dropping to the bottom of the spectrum and not climbing in a quick manner? Why so low at cruise speed? Tried two oil senders, all connections are good?
I bought a T fitting and a mechanical oil gauge. Placed the aftermarket gauge, where I could reference the aftermarket gauge and the modified OE.
Ford specs good oil pressure as being 40-60 psi at 2000 rpm. It's commonly accepted, that 10 psi for every 1000 rpm is safe.
The reason why you noticed the gauge wouldn't climb past M, is the oil pump has a bypass valve built in, somewhere around 40ish psi it opens, so no matter how many rpm you push the engine to, it'll only create so much psi. That may be 40 to 60 psi, depending on many variables but the point being, the oil psi has its limit, it doesn't build infinite psi with increased rpm. I bet yours like mine, engine cold, the needle would go higher? Mine goes to around A.
So what I noticed, in my observations, others will vary. M, on the OE gauge was 50+ psi on the aftermarket gauge.
Hot engine, cruise speed, say 1600-1800 rpm was 40 psi on the aftermarket gauge, yet it was O, on the factory gauge.
My hot idle dropped to 20-25 psi on the aftermarket gauge, yet my OE gauge still read O.
It wasn't until the aftermarket gauge climbed near 40 psi, that the OE gauge would begin to climb and head towards M, often not reaching it, even when the aftermarket unit was reading 50 psi.
So basically, I learned this mod is completely useless, in my case, as the OE gauge doesn't begin to move until 40 psi. So if my engine was having pressure issues, related to lower rpm/psi, I would never know it, unless those issues shown up in the higher range/psi, which isn't always the case.
So basically this takes you from a dummy gauge will a below 7psi warning light, to a slightly more intelligent dummy gauge, that retains a below 7 psi warning light.
I guess my two cents would be, go mechanical or nothing at all, this mod is pointless. Unless aperson is bored watching their tach~speedometer move and wants a new gauge to move around in an erratic pointless way.

 

Probably junk parts, no matter how many new ones you bought. I think AutoZone sells ONLY junk parts now. I avoided them for many years and recently gave them another try. Long story short, I ended up returning, exchanging or throwing away everything I bought except for a refrigerant can tap. *Sigh* And these were basic parts like power steering pump seal kits and UV penlights.

Their oil sensors are junk. I've replaced like 5 of them. Something you could try, I know that the "H" mark on the gauge scale corresponds to 10 ohms on the signal circuit. If you want to experiment you could take a pot and connect it to the signal wire and sweep the gauge up and down the scale manually while reading the resistance with a meter to get an idea of it's accuracy and resolution.

Just remember... factory gauges have never been the best measurement instruments. Lol.

 

I tried oil senders from different vendors, the AutoZone, duralast part, has the actual Ford logo stamped on it, it's a "motorcraft" part in a duralast box, half the price.
I'm done with this project, I watched some online videos, read as much as I could, seems my gauge was doing what others was doing, as far as how far the needle sweeps over a given distance/ reacted to rpm.
Don't think my OE gauge is defective, it's just this doesn't really make the gauge functional, in the sense you can be aware of low psi conditions, because low, can be anything over a 10-40+/- psi, before the modified OE gauge begins to move, all this modification does, is make the OE gauge functional, in the sense that it, happens to move.
I was hoping for a more linear relationship, so it'd be possible to reference any given point on the OE gauge with the mechanical, but that wasn't possible.