I think, answer's simple: CHEAP. The same reason that they started giving you a donut with a new car instead of a decent full-size tire. The motto is "save on everything you can".
I wouldn't agree entirely, the Ford trucks have been very good especially since the early 90s. Most notibly the 302, 351, and V10.. very reliable. The new "modular" 5.4 and 5.7 engines have had alot of problems though and can be called "junk"
At work, I used to have a 1990 Econoline E350 with the 5.8, and a 1995 E350 with the 7.5...they both had the "L" & "H" oil pressure gauge, and they were both fake, too...no needle movement of any kind, hot or cold, at idle or at speed. A dealer mechanic showed me the sender in the wiring diagram, and it was definitely an on-off switch, not a true sender. Same with my '94 T-bird...the really galling thing about the Marauder, is that Ford had AutoMeter specially design a NON-WORKING gauge that looks exactly like the real AutoMeter Pro-Comp Ultra-Lite series, so it wasn't the cost factor in this case...the factory gauge always reads 60 psi, while my real gauge varies from almost 100 psi when cold, to about 25 psi when idling in gear, hot.
By having the gauge always point right into the middle of the "normal" range, it keeps people from running to the dealer everytime there's a fluctuation in the gauge, regardless of the cause.
That is essentially what my neighbor, an engineer who works for Ford, said. Also, I heard that there was a TSB for when people complained that the needle was moving around all the time. What they supposedly did was wire in a resistor on the back of the gauge and put an idiot light sender in. Happy customer. Worked so good they made it standard equipment. My 1990 E350 motorhome had the larger funnel shaped sender of a real gauge, but the gauge still acted like the idiot gauge.
My '95 F150's gauge stays in one spot like that, but with the wifes '92 Aerostar you can watch it move up and down in cycles, presumably with the thermostat cycling.
No kidding. I can barely beleive in that, but I don't really have any hard knowledge of the opposite.
When I said that, Ford was involved "just because". I did not mean that Fords in general are cheap or bad. I've got one myself and I love it. These days everybody gets a donut, so what; you just throw away the donut and get a real wheel. But the fact is that on low-end cars (like my Ford Focus) you get an idiot light, on higher end -- you get a gauge. Needle in the middle makes perfect sense to me. However, I personally would prefer true readings, since I want to understand what's going on with my vehicles.
Not sure what you are getting at in your one comment. You call the V10 reliable and then call the 5.4 V8 junk (and I have no idea what you mean when you refer to a 5.7, since Ford doesn't offer a V8 of this size). Funny thing is the V10 is a 5.4 with 2 more cylinders and it shares nearly all of the issues the 5.4 has. The mod motors have had a few teething problems, but they are definitely very good motors and not junk. After owning two F150's with nearly 300,000 on these supposedly "junk" motors, and not once having to repair anyhting motor related or even having an oil leak, I will respectfully disagee with your assesment...
Well, its kind of like Volkswagen. Either you get a super reliable car, or you get a lemon! And thats how it is the with the new 5.4's from reading on ford-trucks.com and other websites. You were lucky not to have any early failures. I was lucky with my 2003 Audi A4, becuase i seen some of them being lemons
Nice feature to protect the motor, but could get you killed if oil pressure drops in the middle of freeway rush traffic. Anyway, if you vehicle has that feature, a T fitting will allow you to run both the gauge and the sender. With an idiot light, I would definitely run both as the light will alert you where you might not look at a gauge.
