Car is a '96 1.8

Got under my car today to look at running my oil lines, I don't see an oil pressure sender, and there is no feed port near my dipstick.

What is this wizardry? And how do I work around it to run my oil lines?

 

You're looking at it in that pic

 

You don't get a sender with a '96, you get a switch.

 

I see, I was looking for the object on the right, when its actually the left. Still possible to tee off of this, correct?

 

yeah 96+ gets the failaids nb configuration

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of fake oil pressure sender and gauge. Do yourself a favor and get a cluster from a 90 to 93 and pirate the real oil pressure gauge. After you get that installed in your cluster, replace that "switch" with a "sender" found here: OIL PRESSURE SENDER B61P-18-501. You can get one from any Miata in the junkyard with a real gauge and it should work. Arlington used to offer the gauges new but I guess Mazda finally ran out. I bought one back in the day for my 95 and it was... expensive. I never got to install it.

 

I was under the impression that you could just use the 90-94 pressure sender and you'd have a functional gauge. Is that just for 95s? Or am I high right now?

 

That looks expensive. Didn't someone get one of these rigged up in place of the stock oil pressure switch/indicator: 45mm Oil pressure Gauge- Prosport Gauges carries the complete line of 45mm gauges.

 

It works, but as a sort of dummy gauge, I think. The "switch" works like an on/off switch, and the sender is a legit gauge that will give relative pressure on the gauge cluster.

edit: rather, the gauge works whether you have a sender or switch, but the sender is better because it gives an accurate readout, instead of an on/off. Not sure if you need to change cluster internals to upgrade to a sender, though.

 

no, you need a 1.6 gauge as well.
1.8 oil pressure gauge reads 0 at 0v and 30psi at 'any volts'
therefore, with a 1.6 sender, a 1.8 gauge will read "all of it", i.e. like 90psi.

i believe you can mod the gauge but i think it's easier to just get a 1.6 one

 

Teeing off is not the best idea when you consider the weight you hang off that tee, and the vibrations they are subjected to.
Just use a sandwich plate instead.

 

94 Has the real gauge as well. You should just be able to change the resistor setup on the 95+ gauge to make it read whatever sender you want though if I remember what the back of the gauges look like.

 

Has Anyone ever seen a quality tee break? I've seen this setup on cars from the factory with no problems. Never seen even a home depot tee break.

Also, if you use a brass tee, brass is pretty soft and doesn't usually fatigue to the point of snapping

And if you are worried still, you can get a stainless steel tee from a number of websites that wouldn't break if you hit it with a sledge hammer.

 

Also, I've seen plenty of sandwich adapters leak like mad

 

Never saw a tee break - used one for about a year and a half with the full-size pressure sender hanging off the end.

 

The Honder kids break T's all the time. Makes for bad afternoons.

I prefer to run a short braided line to the sending unit mounted on the firewall with a t-bolt mount like you would use on a catch can. Then put the T there and run the feed line around the back of the firewall with adell clamps. Looks clean, you'll never break anything this way, and it costs only a few dollars more than buying a single line and risking engine death.