Oil light comes on after sudden braking

oil level checked by dipstick, a little low

That’s nice. Is there a question coming soon? If there is, you might also want to tell everyone what kind of car it is.

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" oil level checked by dipstick, a little low "
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CSA

I’ve never seen an oil light come on while oil was just “a little low.” If the oil light comes on, even during sudden braking, the oil is “a LOT low.” In fact, I would be surprised if the oil showed on the dip stick at all.

In addition to finding out the make, model, and model year of this mystery vehicle, it would be helpful to know how many miles are on the odometer.

Also–when you found the oil level to be “a little low”, how much oil did you need to add in order to bring the level up to the full mark?

And–after filling the crankcase to the proper level, did the oil light stop lighting up when you braked suddenly?

Very often, the devil is in the details, and with so few details being provided to us, there is just not enough information for me to give you a substantive answer.

You guys saying that a car needs oil to lube the motor? Geeze, I thought air lube wasthe up and coming trend.
I’d like to share a funny story. About 2 years ago, we had a customer bring in a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0l straight six. Complaint was that oil pressure guage wasn’t reading. 240,000 odd miles on it, owner drove it in, not rapping, knocking, or blowing smoke. 1st thing my co-worker did was to pull dipstick. Nothing on stick, so he proceeds to add oil to take it up to the full mark. When he was done, he’d put in 5-1/2 qts. The 4.0l holds 6. Guess what? The guage now read! We never could figure out why it was that low, no big leaks, or excessive smoke. Best we could figure, Maybe this guy ticked somebody off, & they drained his oil into a pan to get even. In the end, the customer drove it away, & I’ve seen him on the road since. Says a lot about the durability of the 4.0l, eh?

You’ve should consider that there are usually two oil capacities: one for drain-and-refill with filter change, and one for during assembly. You can account for the difference in what doesn’t come out when you do a normal drain-and-refill and filter change. I am guessing there was more than 1/2 quart of oil in the engine; not much more, but more.

You’re probably right, Whitey, but it’s stil pretty amazing that this chucklehead didn’t blow up the motor, it being a high mileage motor to begin with. As you can probably guess, I’m a Jeep fanatic. We have 4 of 'em in our family, all straight 6’s.