What's the deal with oil pressure gauges?

[trickyrix]

Finding the bigger brakes is a bit hard now days but can still be done cheap and I love it. Plus the car already comes with the "real" oil gauge!

Hmmmm.... OK, good points there about the majority of the chassis upgrades. However, I've heard the same comment before about the "real" oil pressure gauge on the the early cars - what's up with that? I HAVE noticed that my '94 reads all over the place and I've threatened to put a master gauge on it just to find out wtf the deal is.

So... wtf is the deal with it?

[POS Racing]

The early Miatas ('90 through '94) were built with genuine, working oil pressure gauges. It had real PSI markings and the needle actually indicated the oil pressure of your engine. In '94, Mazda replaced the gauge with an "idiot gauge" which looks like an oil pressure gauge, but in reality only has two possible needle positions - just like a light but less useful since it gives the false impression of showing a reading.

[Adam Payrot]

The early Miatas ('90 through '94) were built with genuine, working oil pressure gauges. It had real PSI markings and the needle actually indicated the oil pressure of your engine. In '94, Mazda replaced the gauge with an "idiot gauge" which looks like an oil pressure gauge, but in reality only has two possible needle positions - just like a light but less useful since it gives the false impression of showing a reading.

Make that 95 My 94 had a real OPG



FWIW:
The sender is above the oil filter, if it's about half the size of the oil filter, then you have the "real" one. If it is much smaller, then somebody retrofitted the idiot light sender on your car.