oil pressure gague

[Chinookie]

While driving today I noticed that my oil pressure gauge climbed to the H. I found a place to pull over and shut it off fearing the worst. I noticed that the needle was slowly coming down but that it looked funny. I put my hand on the face of the cluster and it was very hot. Upon closer inspection, it was coming down because it was melting. I was able to open up the dash and pull the plug from the back and shut it off. Anyone else have something like this happen to them? What would cause this to just spontaneously die and melt?

How hard is it to replace a gauge in the cluster, or do I need to look for an entirely new one?

 

[prwillard2]

Did you just change out your cluster from the super basic one? If so, you may have a short somewhere.

 

[Chinookie]

No, all original. Only 130k km.

 

[jblueridge]

I would look for a shorted wire running to the oil sensor.

 

[Chinookie]

I did just change the oil. You think some residual oil dripped out of the filter on the sensor would cause this?

 

[jblueridge]

no.
Oil gauge works by measuring voltage or resistance in a circuit with the sender at the far end.
Maybe a short in the sensor’s wiring allowed to much current to go to the dash gauge, which melted.