In a Saturn SL2 1991 when you come to a complete stop or are caught in heavy traffic the oil pressure drops low and the car starts to overheat what would cause this?

Answer 1

check if the fan is actually turning on when it heats up. It wasn't in mine and all i had to do was wire the fan to the battery with a fuse and turn it on manually... now it doesn't overheat... there is probably a sensor somewhere that may be going out so check on that maybe... also what my mechanic friends told me is that the oil gets burned through the piston rings out the exhaust and that's why you have to keep adding oil. (this may be why the oil pressure is low) so just add more oil, look into the sensor for the fan and maybe the piston rings. that gets spendy so I'm not gonna do that one

Dont forget to check your radiator fluid. You may have a slow leak somewhere. Its important to check your hoses every once in a while for excess wear and tear. You can do this simply by giving them a squeeze (especially where the hoses bend and are secured) If you see lots of cracking, it wouldn't hurt to change them.

Also run your car in your driveway for a while with some plain cardboard (no print) underneath your engine and radiator. After about 20 minutes, turn off your car. After another 20 minutes take a look at that large piece of cardboard, and note the various colors of fluid you may have.

My Saturn had the overheating problem when stopped. After further investigation, it turned out that the electric cooling fan never turned on. The only way I was able to get it to stop overheating while stopped was to turn on the air conditioning, which forced a fan to come on to cool the AC condenser.

I found the root cause of the problem was the engine temperature sensor. The temperature gauge was accurate which threw me off until I found that there are two temperature sensors- one for the gauge, and one to feed information to the computer. After replacing the engine coolant temperature sensor, the problem was solved.

If the freon in my ac system becomes to low, my cooling fan will not come on and my temperature gauge rises. I recharged the ac system and the coolant systems stays in check. I guess the fan relay is joined to the coolant system pressure switches.????