Expert: Roland Finston - 1/31/2012

Question
Good day Roland, the check engine light and low oil pressure light on my 2006 5.7L 8 cylinder Chrysler 300C came on.  When i look at the oil pressure on the display the oil pressure drops to about 0 when the car is at rest and rises to about 35 psi when i am in motion.  Error code P0520 shows up when i check the error code.  I replaced the oil and the oil filter but the error code still remains.  What do you think the problem could be?  Thank you.

Answer
Hi Yusef,
The fault code number and the oil pressure reading are related to one another. The code means that there is something wrong with the oil pressure sensor or its wiring (circuit). So I would believe that there is nothing wrong with the actual oil pressure but rather with the accuracy of the reading on the gauge. The sensor is located on the right front of the engine and has 3 wires (pink/yellow, violet/gray, and dark blue/dark green) for identification purposes. It is typically near to the oil filter but I am not certain of that. Once you find I would begin by checkin the plug/socket and also look over the wire harness for any damage. Then you would want to verify the connections between the sensor wires and the pins of the powertrain control module to which they are connected, and also that the pink/yellow wire shows a reading of 5 volts compared to a sensor ground pin on the controller. If all that checks out then replacing the sensor may be the next step.  Let me know if you want the pin assignments for the three wires.
Roland
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