I have a 2004 x-type 3.0 and would like to add a oil pressure switch to the motor. Where could I pipe this in?

 

Duplicate post deleted. Someone who knows your engine will stumble alone eventually.

 

Kiknazz, your best bet would be accessing the front of the heads and putting in a switch there using a plug hole there. After that, your options are very limited as there is no easy place to access the oil system.

What are you trying to do? Maybe that will help me understand what you are attempting to do. There already is an oil pressure switch on the motor that the ECU monitors to ensure you have a bare minimum amount of oil pressure.

 

I am going to use it as a simple on/off switch with a relay for something that I only want to be on with the engine running. That makes the key switch not a good choice. Thank you for your help. I will look around for oil ports.

 

kiknazz, the other option is to set up an electronic circuit that will only activate at a voltage greater than 12.6 VDC. This takes nothing more than a simple op amp, a zener diode (rated at 12.6 VDC), a second diode (put in series with the first to get the voltage raised above 12.6 VDC), and a 20 amp relay. The op amp will have enough driving force to actuate the relay and you use a switched power lead to provide an input to the + lead of the op amp and to power the op amp itself. The 2 diodes get wired to the - lead of the op amp (the zener diode reverse biased, the normal diode forward biased). Then you wire up the relay like you would any other relay, but use the op amp as the "switch". The op amp will not activate the relay until the voltage in the car rises to above 13.2 VDC (above the 12.6 VDC that the battery outputs when the engine is off). With this simple circuit, you can mount this controller whereever you want.

If you need me to draw this out for you, just say so.

 

Thanks Thermo
A schematic would make this much more simple. Would radio shack have these parts? I am pretty good with soldering and circuts.
Thank you for your help.

 

kiknazz, I have not forgotten about you. Trying to figure out a way to make things easy for you to understand. Hopefully later tonight I will have something for you.

 

kiknazz, ok, please look at the photo below and that should have most of the information that you will need to make this circuit work.



Of note, the zener that I found is actually a 13.0 VDC zener vice a 12.6 VDC zener. Things should work just fine, but you may find that it will toggle a little bit on you if the alternator starts dropping the voltage too much. If this is the case, you can replace the zener with a 12.0 VDC zener and then add in a standard diode in series that is forward biased. That will give you the stability that you need. Along these same lines, if you are having issues finding the 100 ohm resistor, you can use any resistor up to 1K without any issues. So, this should give you some flexibility.

The other thing I did not include is the part number for a box to put the circuit board in. I wasn't sure quite how you wanted to mount things. Radio Shack does sell project boxes that will be big enough to put a small circuit board in and the relay, so, all you would see is the 4 wires coming out of the box (switchable power wire, ground wire, wire from the battery, and the wire going to what you want to switch on and off). The wiring for the zener and the coil side of the relay does not need to be anything heavy. 22 gauge wire will be more than enough to handle the power that this side of the circuit is going to have. As for the switch side of the relay, I would recommend at least 16 gauge wiring if you are looking at anything over 10 amps worth of draw. Along those same lines, if you want use a 30 amp relay, go for it. This circuit will handle it. Just up the wire gauge relative to the load that you are powering on the switch side.

If you have any questions, let me know. If you know something about electronics, getting this wired up should be very easy. I think the hard part will be getting short wire runs to jump between the circuit board and the coil side of the relay. But, that shouldn't be all that hard.

 

Thank you Thermo for all your work on this. I will try this out. It seems much more simple than an oil switch. I did look for an oil port, but it is so crowded there, I could not see a thing!
Thanx, I owe you one!