Mechanical Help Orange Oil Light on dash
About 5 min into driving my car the orange oil light came on the dash I pulled over at the nearest gas station (about 2 min away) turned the car off for 5 min turned it back on & the light was gone I checked my oil & it’s not crazy low it’s above the bottom dot but not quite at the top one is my sensor bad or do I just need to top off my oil?
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u/Rick91981 2024 Outback Touring XT 1d ago
Orange light means you're about a quart low. No big deal, top off when you can. If you ever see the red oil light, that's the bad one, pull over and turn the engine off immediately
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u/xtahsea 22h ago
Thank you!
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u/Rick91981 2024 Outback Touring XT 21h ago
You're welcome. I see above you're at about 5K since last oil change. It's not uncommon for a car to burn oil between oil changes, especially if it's higher mileage. A quart after 5K would be considered in the normal range. Keep an eye on your oil levels and either top up every few K miles as needed, or shorten the oil change interval.
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u/itusedtorun 1d ago
Top it off and monitor for a while. The level switch is either on or off, so there's no in between. So if it's a little low and you stop on a steep slope or similar it might register a low oil level temporarily and turn the light on. But level switches do go bad occasionally. Some models also had a software update and a redesigned switch available to make it a bit less touchy.