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OK. Hammered up from the south coast into Brum, well as much as the traffic and then the jams A34-M4 and M40-M42 would allow it. Went at it quite particularly mallet and tongs coming off the '42 and heading for work at a particular golf club. Coming off a hard/medium-high rev throttle in 2nd to make the last turn off into the car park, with some sideways G force.......

peeeeeeep

.....high pitched, not like a horn, fairly loud and definately electronic not a mechanical part, and somewhere in the car. At the same time one of the red lights came on but I only caught that out of the side of my eye so I don't know which. Stayed for maybe 1 or 2 seconds is all.

Then it went away again, and the car ran fine - if a little different in tone than 'usual', particularly at idle - from then on, and all the way home. Still sounds a bit different.

What in the world causes that? I did once read that the Polo had a buzzer in it for some complaint or other (that I meant to hook up as a lights-on exit warning) but can't remember what for. And why would it only come on briefly, in those circumstances?

Best guess I can make is that I did something evil to the oil pressure with that maneuver, or it's sprung a leak (from the hammerage) or even fractured a coolant gasket and that's the first warning. Going to go check those two levels now before setting off back to the grind.
Gently.

Guess as it cant talk, this is one of the only ways the car's spirit can express it's displeasure at how it's treated

its not a problem as such, its just that you're oil is thinner because its warm and the pressure is slightly reduced. My mk2 does that quite alot when I coome off the motorway.

there is a high pressure oil swich and the buzzer comes on if its less than 30psi at 2000rpm (or something like that).

I was going to say it sounds like the oil buzzer on the Mk2...I didn't think the MK3s had them?

Then again, I never had MK3s long enough to find out!

Well, I've had this one 20 months so far and it's the first time I've encountered that. Then again it's the first time I've had quite such a long blast - previous record is about 140 miles from Bangor, and thats generally got a lot less opportunity to literally sit for 40 odd miles at a time with the throttle pushed all the way to maximum (kind of test-track conditions ). Granted, a higher average speed, because no solid tailbacks, but a lot of sitting behind V50s on 2-lane bits of dual carriageway at 68mph with the throttle hardly open a crack.

Also I checked the oil before I set off, it was about a third up from MIN to MAX, and it's "only" 10w40, so it may well have thinned to a level where the sensor triggered a too-little-oil condition. However, coolant temperature never made it past 70-75 celcius, if the guage is accurate....

Next time I make that trip however I want to be doing it with a little more time to spare (both ways, as going was even quicker than coming back - all downhill ) so I can just cruise it in the low 70s... and see if it still returns 45mpg.

Guess it shows the resilience of the engine though, this being the first warning light in about 18000 miles of abuse.... If it had been a Fiat Punto or Cinq it would be fit for scrap by now. At least thats as much as I can guess from the noise that seems to come from any of those that pass me by these days. Every last one seems to have emphysema, brochitis and chronic flatulence all at the same time and I'm amazed they're still keeping with the traffic (oh... and all the Uno Formulas... but Pandas seem to be made of bricks and glaswegian navvie bones, despite tinfoil bodywork, until one day they just stop working altogether).

It only seemed to happen in my MK2 when giving it a lot of "pasty"...if i was driving normally it would be fine!

Maybe its the "pastymeter" telling you to push harder

Is that pasty as in "cornish" or "wallpaper"?

I like that way of thinking... the pastymeter... like it was giving me black marks for not grabbing enough of those tight gaps and so losing a few seconds off the whole trip.
(peeeeeeep! what are you doing you numpty! if you'd kept it floored for this turn off and cut up a couple more vectras we could have made a 69.1mph average and saved 20 seconds!)

hehehe.. well.. so long as your car survived it a few times, I guess this one can survive it once. may double check when i last changed the oil and run *some* old out and dilute the remainder with new as a favour just before it goes to the garage. (got a feeling it was less than 3k past though, and it's only a murky snot colour on the dipper rather than nasty brown or black)

It's most likely to be oil surging as you cornered really hard. A lot of the G40 owners come across it, probably because in general they're driving harder and faster than the other Mk3 owners!

The oil warning light shouldn't come on just because you've been giving it some stick, and 10W40 isn't a bad grade oil to use - I think VAG Synta Silver is the same rating. A sign that you've thinned the oil a bit and been ragging the car too much is often a noise from the tappets once the revs drop to idle.

I think the MK3 does have a buzzer. Its such an annoying noise as well you have to stop the car its that irritating. On my friends MK3 coupe the oil pump failed and that buzzer came on before the engine quickly seized up, hes now on his 2nd engine.

Yeah, I got that noise too.... Finally I managed to kick my own arse into checking the level and..................

must have burned up a little more than usual on that trip... i generally budget for about 1 litre every couple thousand miles, so a 360 mile round trip shouldn't have dropped it from "one third" (counting "max" as 1 and "min" as zero) to below minimum. (Checked it at that level before setting off)

It didn't even register on the dipstick. No wonder it was making pingy noises when pulling into the carpark (and beeping..). I sort of thought they were from the blowing manifold, but no.

Put the emergency litre of oil in from the boot, check the level a few minutes later, it's only about 2/3 up (rather than being slightly over max as i might expect it to, from minimum). Ouch. And a lot of the noise was obviously gone a few seconds after starting the car back up.

Feeling a bit embarrased over this, usually Im a complete anorak for keeping an eye on the oil. hope it hasnt caused any damage..

howd u manage to burn so much oil?

Well, it's kind of like this:

There's absolutley no pile left to the carpet under where the throttle pedal gets stopped by the bodywork
(the hills couldnt have helped either, and i have a suspicion that once the level ran low it probably started to burn even more... but at least, for once, 166 or more of those 169 miles were certifiably spent in top)

other than that, not sure... could be a sign of wrongness under the bonnet. dont think i've ever got through it that fast before.

Get an oil pressure gauge. Thats what Im definately gonna get in both mine now after mine went on the way to inters.

Oil drop out or just a beeply surge?

Dont think I can afford that (or would be able to fit it)... wanna save for a revcounter first!

I've had the same problem, when I going around a corner too fast and the buzzer comes on as well as the oil light but the oil level is always high I check it every week.

Guess it must be those 155s I put on then, they've got just that couple extra percent grip (you'd never really feel it ) over the 145s to tip the binary scale switch from 0 to 1