oil pressure fluctuation and engine stopping
 

Hi i'm new and i was hoping you guys could help me figure out what was wrong with my car.

I have a 92 sl saturn and it has 145k miles. It burn a little bit of oil and has a slightly cracked piston ring.

Recently the engine has stopped while i'm driving and when i get to stop light the oil pressure gauge starts dropping and wavering a lot.

Right now it has more then enough oil in it.

any help or ideas would be great.

"...more than enough oil..." ??? These little engines are designed to run with the amount of oil indicated on the engine dipstick. Suprisingly, too much oil is nearly as bad as too little. With 145k on the clock, you may have worn valve guides rather than a broken ring ... a compression check would tell you

well it doesn't actually have too much oil i was just saying it is defiantly full. Is it possible that my oil pump is failing?

Failing oil pump is always a possibility -- or a gunked up one. Since you're "new", I suspect you bought the car used. Any feeling at all as to the service record on it ??

It was my parents car they got it new and gave it to me a couple of years ago. It's still on it's original oil pump. I believe all of the scheduled maintenance milestones have been taken care of but i don't know for sure. How long to oil pumps normally last??

I've had 'em last beyond where you are right now -- but I've had 'em fail too. Put a mechanical gage on the port and run it, and see what values you get....

Before I would expect a mechanical problem with the oil pump and with the dip stick saying that there IS oil in the engine, and the gauge indicating oil pressue problems I would change the sending unit for the gauge.
The computor I believe is programed to shut the engine down if oil pressure dissappears.

welcome back unc!

+1 to uncljohn -- the engine will shut down if the oil pressure disappears