No oil pressure 3.8

[Cornfield creations]

I am working on my grandmothers 96 le sabre with the 3.8. She had massive intake gasket leaks and causing misfires. So to take care of her I replaced the upper and lowers, plus a tune-up.

I changed the oil, let it run, checked it all out. Took it for a test drive, everything went great! Did some other work on it later, and took it for another drive, then I watched the oil pressure fluctuate. It would dip down, go up to normal, dip down again. It raised a final time, then dropped completely off. No oil pressure since.

Has anyone run into this before. I know the 3.8's are known for poor oil pressure, but this was just odd.

Another thing, there was tons of oil on top of the lower intake. Little lakes in each galley, and the upper intake was saturated with oil and carbon. She doesn't drive it hard,which is probably the problem. But it looks like it was leaking a LOOOONG time.

 

[Fordum]

I hope not, but you may be screwed.
I have seen that twice. Both times it was with engines driven short distances slowly.

It always happens after an oil change. Both times, there was large amounts of sludge built up in the engine.
The new oil broke it loose, and it went straight to the oil pump.

One time it was saved by dropping the pan, scraping vast amounts of black goo out and replacing the pump.

The other time, the same thing was attempted, and the new pump stopped up after about a day.
That one took a rebuild, because when the sludge loosened, it developed a bearing knock.

 

[black dawg]

the lower intake is always all nasty with carbon and oil. I would put a real gauge in it to check pressure.

 

[Cornfield creations]

You can hear the lifters clacking, also changed the filter thinking it may have been faulty, still nothing, ran it shortly and the filter was still dry.

I figured I'll probably have to pull the pan and clean the screen, seemed to me that it clogged up. I hope that is all, this thing has low miles on it. I hear the pumps on these have issues, could that be part of the problem? Just trying to prepare myself tomorrow when I get back to the shop.

 

[brian wafer]

seen one time where the strainer was jammed with silicone from useing too much.

 

[wasted wages]

this happened to me once...

I had pulled the intake on my small block, and stuffed balls of paper towels into all of the intake and oil passages while I scraped off the gaskets on the heads.....when I took a smoke break,,, one of my buddy's decided to " help " me by cleaning up all the bits of gasket material and blowing out the lifter valley with shop air.....

I spent the next day pulling the oil pan and fishing out all of the paper towels he had blown down into the oil pan......and got sucked up into the oil pump pick up screen....