[Pink_elephant]

Hi guys!
I drive a 116i from 2011. It’s one of the very early F20 model with n13b16 engine. Currently at 185000km’s. It has been using/losing quite some oil over the years and I recently made it a mission to get it all repaired myself.

Things I’ve recently done:
New timing chain, vanos, solenoids.. etc..
New front camshaft seal.
New valve cover gasket, pcv & cover
New pcv breather pipes.
New coolant expansion tank

Thing is, over the years I regularly ran out of oil. E.g. a dry dipstick. Since I knew, I’ve been keeping an eye on it and try to refill asap. So I drive around with a bottle of oil

Back to the repairs:
One of the last things to fix for me was a very leaky oil pressure sensor. However, since I never got an oil pressure alert I already thought the sensor was faulty. That’s why I did the following test:

* Disconnect the wire harness from the oil sensor & start engine: all is fine, no alerts
* connect a new oil pressure sensor the harness, but leave it dangling (the old sensor was still mounted). Started engine: all ok. No alerts.

How is this possible? The sensor should have reported 0 oil pressure during the last test?

Is it possible to deactivate these kind of sensors? I expected big red engine malfunction warnings on the dashboard. What else could be wrong? Wire loom? Ecu?

Ista does not report any error or faults.

Btw: for the ones who want to execute the replacement: it’s doable with just removing the front bottom cover. If your arms are as small as mine then they’ll fit right between the heat shield & exhaust/catalytic converter. I cut a size 24 wrench in halve in order to remove the sensor. Space it very limited!

[IJO]

You can read the actual pressure with the bimmerlink.app app (and also the coolant temp, boost pressure and oil temperature and much more)

(the pressure is absolute so deduct about 1bar to see the actual pressure)

[Pink_elephant]

Soo, I contacted Ista again and I was wrong. There were errors present from during the earlier tests. I must have been looking at an older session then.

I was also able to read out the live oil pressure. It seems the new sensor is working fine.

However: shouldn’t the instrument panel have mentioned something about the ‘pressure too low’ or ‘pressure too high’ messages? In other cars the oil light would go on if oil pressure drops.
Not on this car?

[IJO]

It's easier to monitor it in real time with a low cost OBD dongle and Bimmerlink on your phone.