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We've had one of the coldest winters in Michigan lately. Usually my car (2001 Buick Regal) is a trooper in the cold weather, but the other day as I was leaving work, I noticed a blinking light on my instrument panel. Since it's was red, I thought it best to look up what it meant, and it was the oil pressure light. It's also noticeably tougher to turn the steering wheel all the way to one extreme or the other, like the last quarter turn in either direction, not sure if that's related since I have a very slow power steering fluid leak (I don't even top it off once a year, and just topped it off a couple of months ago).

I haven't troubleshot yet (shame on me), but I did notice my low oil light hasn't come on, so I know there's at least some oil in there.

I'll be checking/adding oil in a couple of hours, but just curious about what other troubleshooting I can do. When I started my car this morning, it was -7 Fahrenheit outside and my car didn't sound good at all. I made it to work, but it drove noticeably different.

Why does it flicker, and not stay consistently on? Is this a sign of bad things to come?

MDMoore313
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In my particular case, the cause seemed to be low oil and an oil weight too heavy for the temperature.

I only checked the oil level so late because my low oil light never came on, so the oil must have been low enough to cause pressure drop, but not so low as to trip the oil level sensor.

Also, I see reports online of 10W oil being too heavy for temps below 0º F, and we've been having sustained temps below -10º F for the past week. However I've been driving my car every day during that time period, future readers of this may not be.

I may switch to 5W-30 after some research, even if it's just for this one oil change.

So, to summarize, my particular case was caused by low oil level, with the added stress of the weight being too heavy for the frigid temperatures.

MDMoore313
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