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View Full Version : It was the oil pressure!


The Preacher
11-21-2002, 05:08 PM
Jeep's all back together and fixed. I made the 60 mile round trip to town in her tonight and she ran great. This follows a long ordeal trying to figure out why after about 10 minutes of running my engine would start to clatter down low and I would lose power. It was all due to low oil pressure.

After dropping the pan and finding more than a coffee cup full of debris on the bottom, I was afraid the engine was toast. What I thought was metal engine parts was apparently bronken down sealer material. It was non-metallic and covered the bottom of the pan in the sump area and was caked on the pickup screen. I replaced the screen, cleaned the pan, re built the oil pump and wala! All better.

In the past, one thing that had bothered me was after changing oil & filter, the oil would always seem to get dirty real fast. It was due to all this junk in the bottom of my pan. As soon as I saw how caked up the pickup screen was, I became quite hopeful that I had found the source of my trouble.

One other indicator. I used to have a noisy lifter at startup. Guess what, no more lifter noise at all!

If my oil pressure guage would have been working, I would have known where to start from the beginning but it never has worked. Lesson to everyone, if your oil pressure guage does not work, fix it or replace it. The life of your engine depends on it.

"And they lived happily ever after" tongue.gif

End of story.

Cowboy
11-21-2002, 05:12 PM
thats what my jeep is doing to me now. I'll have to do that to my jeep.

The Preacher
11-21-2002, 05:18 PM
Cowboy,

I spent about $50 on all this counting the oil. The pump rebuild kit was like $14, oil pan gasket $8, and pickup screen $16. Then, just add the price of oil & filter.

83 WagDriver
11-21-2002, 05:22 PM
wow...I hope thats my problem.
The diff between you and I is that i have oil pressure.
Pary for my wag, Preacher

Mario

Tad
11-21-2002, 09:38 PM
Good to hear John, glad it was only that.

Stolen76
11-21-2002, 10:07 PM
woooo hoooo !! glad to hear it came out well for you !

krob725
11-21-2002, 11:27 PM
:D :D :D

turtlejoe
11-22-2002, 12:08 AM
Isn't it great when you find it's just a simple thing? Guess I'll drop my pan in a couple weeks and take a look ...

sailingjeep
11-22-2002, 12:54 AM
I'm planning on changing my oil this weekend and was going to drop the pan and put a new gasket on there. Sounds like the oil pump rebuild is really cheap and maybe not too hard. Think I ought to mess with it if I'm not having any troubles out of it??

desert_freak
11-22-2002, 01:50 AM
Glad to hear everything turned out for the better. Good piece of advice for everyone, drop those pans and clean them out! Someone pass the wrench I'm dropping my pan :D

P.J.

CowKiller
11-22-2002, 03:08 AM
ok i can go to sleep now. that was a nice story.

glad to here it is still alive.

The Preacher
11-22-2002, 03:32 AM
Originally posted by sailingjeep:
Think I ought to mess with it if I'm not having any troubles out of it??Well I'm no expert. Probably not. The pump kit basically has 3 components. First, it comes with 2 gears. They are what produces the pump action. The two that came out showed no damage as there's little that can go wrong with them.

Secondly and probably the key component is the pressure relief valve. It is just a piston with a long spring behind it. What often happens is that the spring, which is loaded with a set tension, can lose that tension and need to be replaced. There's a big 15/16 bolt on the side of the pump and inside there is where the spring and piston are located.

Thirdly, the final component is just the gasket. It was worth doing the job for me because mine was leaking anyway.

I don't know if the rebuilding the pump made any change or not, however it couldn't have hurt. The real problem was having a clogged up pickup screen located in the oil pan. While you could try to soak and flush out the screen, if there was any sign of buildup, I would spend the $15 to replace it.

Wagoneer622
11-22-2002, 08:39 AM
You must be breathing a sigh of relief when finding out the good news.

andy d
11-22-2002, 09:24 AM
you must live right Preacher. :D i performed the same operation to no avail on the original engine in my 88. the proverbial stitch in time