Need Help!! Oil Pressure sending unit?

Ok guys I need help. I am writing this in a hotel room in Georgia on my way to Florida for spring break..I own a 2001 XJ Sport, Auto, 4.0, 2in lift, drove her for about 10 hours today and made a routine stop for gas, filled her up, came back out and started her up only to see my Check Gauges light come on and my oil pressure gauge at 0. I stopped it immediately and did a routine check, oil level is fine, no leaks and I could hear oil running back into the pan from the block. Started her back up after a few minutes, no noise or odd sounds but oil pressure gauge still at 0. Decided to get back on the highway and drove another 200 miles at 70 mph in the mountains with no engine problems other than the pressure guage still reads O. It has run fine all day, the guage scares me but I am assuming nothing internally is wrong and that the oil pressure sending unit simply failed? It has always had good oil pressure and ran all day on the highway at about 50 psi according to the gauge..Am I on the right track or could I really have no oil pressure and have been just got lucky?

If you really did have zero oil pressure, the engine would have seized after less than a mile, never mind go 200 without any problem. Replace the sending unit.

Ditto. Sounds like the sending unit went walkabout.

You would have heard tapping, knocking, grinding and then an awful silence if your engine really didn't have any oil pressure.

Thanks guys, I thought that was probably the case. Its a scary thing though to drive 1200 miles with a faulty gauge!!

This just happened to my son's 00', with the exception that the guage went to above 80. He called me upset thinking he had spun a bearing. Good thinking for a 19 year old.

It was just the sending unit, they normally either read 0 or too high when they go bad.

mine craped out but also leaked. I was getting good pressure readings turns out i had about 1 1/2 quarts remaining and the seal on the sending unit was leaking the oil out over the course of a day or more. The sending unit is really easy to hit, and even easier for some dumb arse quicky oil change monkey to whack it and wreck the sending unit. So be careful.