If the coolant got low enough that the entire engine was severely overheating, the oil will also be overheating. Even if this engine does not have an oil cooler, the oil is cooled somewhat by it splashing on the cylinder walls, pistons, head surfaces, etc. Most engines will drop the oil pressure as the oil viscosity drops with the oil temperature rise.
On the old VW beetle engines the warning that you had a cooling problem was the oil pressure light first flickering and then lighting steady. If you didn’t heed the warning, bearing problems soon followed.
Just in my humble unexpert opinion but there must be some kind of tie in to the oil light but can’t for the life of me figure out what it would be. Unless it was just a computer glitch when the temp light came on. The leak answers the question about the over-heat possibly, unless it over-heated which then burst a hose or something to cause the leak . If on the other hand, your oil pressure dropped off, causing the engine to heat up due to lack of lubrication, which then caused the bursting of the hose or whatever, is what I would be concerned about.
Lack of lubrication that would cause the engine to heat up would be very disconcerting and damaging. I think this is what used to happen to the old Ford Falcon 6 cyl engines. After 60K or so miles, they would just over-heat. I think its got to go to the shop to first find and fix the leak. Then a manual oil pressure gauge needs to be put on to check the actual pressure. Then may not hurt to send in an oil sample to check for bearing deposits etc. while you are at it, and a compression check. Don’t know how easy it will be to check for damage. Might be the only way to tell is to fix the leak and drive it some more and if it over-heats again or oil leak comes on, engine is toast anyway.
I fear for the worst case though as the only plausible explanation.
Ok, I change the oil air filter myself. I flushed the radiator recently as it had sludge. Had the timing and new rear main seal and new oil pan done in April of this year. I do not drive hard, occasionally I will get on it a little usually in 5th gear. So I started my car last night after work. It warmed up normally then did a short drive around the building. Came to a stop sign noticed a bit of smoke could have been steam. I park the smoke went away after a couple minutes it was coming from behind both headlights. I shut it off sat for maybe 5 minutes. Started it up decided to drive. Got maybe 1/4 mile and the temp light came on, but my temp needle was in middle normal spot. I stopped put coolant in turned on my heat drove maybe 1/2 mile then the temp needle climbed to 3/4 of the way to red, and the oil light came on. I found a spot to stop. Shut the car off. Called a truck had it towed to my house all around 1 am. When I got up around 9 am I went to the car checked oil cap nothing abnormal, checked dip stick nothing abnormal, open coolant tank had a bit of orange sludge in bottom no fluid. So I put coolant in. Started the car sounded and ran normal immediately the temp light came on again. Weird as the car was not even close to warm yet. It ran for another minute, no oil light. Shut the car off. Came back 15 minutes later, there was a puddle of coolant under the car even with the fire wall in center. Also when I started it I noticed the hose in the picture had condensation on it. Hope this helps. Look forward to your thoughts.
It sounds like you have a leak in either the heater core or the hose leading to the heater core.
Please do not start the engine again, as every time that you see that oil pressure light glaring at you, there is more and more chance of bearing damage and damage to the cylinder walls.
If you are not up to doing the needed repairs yourself (and if it is the heater core, I can assure you that you aren’t up to the challenge), the car needs to be towed to a competent mechanic.
^ @Volvo V70: Didn’t you know that offering advice that is not liked by somebody is not permitted, no matter how little information they gave you to work with?
Come on!
Get with the program!
Just filling the overflow tank won’t do much, you need to open the radiator cap and add more fluid there as well - of course do so with the motor cool or cold.
It is obvious you have a leak, question is where? Antifreeze can travel along a hose and then drip in a spot somewhat distant from the actual leak. You need to get a good flashlight and be willing to even crawl around under the car a bit to find the leak. If there are original hoses and clamps on an '01 car they can fail due to age and corrosion. I don’t think a good mechanic would take too long to figure out where the leak is an how to fix it.
I think the oil light is not an issue for now. Deal with the coolant leak. If the car has plenty of oil in it as per the dipstick measure - then an oil light could be a clogged pick up screen in the oil pan or a sign that the oil pump is going bad. Failure of an oil pump is not very common, but a mechanic can put an oil pressure gauge on the car pretty easily and get actual oil pressure readings at various rpm’s to test the oil pump’s performance.
Your oil light came on simply because the high temp from the overheating thinned out your oil.
The important thing is to get your coolant loss fixed. If you are lucky, the overheating may not have caused any damage.
“I flushed the radiator recently as it had sludge.”
This sounds like the oil and coolant have mixed
“open coolant tank had a bit of orange sludge in bottom no fluid”
When you get the car to the shop, I recommend you ask them to perform a block test. It checks for the presence of combustion gases in the coolant. If the blue liquid turns yellow, that means you’ve got a bad head gasket, cracked block, or something along those lines
If you do have combustion gases in the coolant, because of a bad head gasket, that will cause overheating
I knew someone back in the ninetys that had, as I recall, a Golf that ruptured a heater core tank. The VW dealer said it was a common problem with these cars. When they replaced the heater core they also put some kind of partial bypass in to relieve the excess back pressure.
Sometimes weird things will happen after the cooling system is serviced if an air pocket remains. Overheating, steam forming and blowing out hose connections, etc. This tends to occur more in low slung cars – i.e. sports cars – b/c of the lack of head room in the engine compartment. There are usually special procedures for dealing the the cooling system in these kinds of cars. OP, did you follow the service manual’s procedure for bleeding the air from the cooling system? Besides fixing the apparent leak, with a little luck maybe that is all you need to do.