Re-upping this post.

So, as I was posting all of this stuff, my wife was leaving me. I got the house and the Jeep, she got the Ford Focus. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" />

Anyway I replaced the sender and all seemed fine for about 3 months (though the pressure seemed to read high) then same symptom. Another new sender and it's been stable for about 2 years, but it consistently reads very high pressure (40-60 psi at idle depending on temp, pegged over 80 at anything over 1500 rpm).

Do I have a "bad scale factor" in the cheapo Checker sender or do I have a blocked oil passage somewhere? How can I "quickly" check what actual oil pressure is? Unscrew sender and put some sort of "trusted" guage in its place, for example?

Oh, yeah, I've put a good 20k on this little 4banger since the original post, so at least that's positive! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />