OK, so, I was thinking my motor was done for the other day. I floored it onto an onramp, it belted out a cool cloud of black oily smoke which covered my rear window in oil. Other than that though, it was running fine. I get about 10 more miles down the road, I come to a stop sign - she stalls. However, I noticed that as soon as it stalled, the temp gauge shot up, but then came back down, so I didn't think much of it. Pushed it across the road, tried to fire it, but it wouldn't immediately fire back up. Took a couple minutes before it would run.

Once it got fired though, the low oil pressure light was on. However, if I gave it some throttle and raised the RPM's - the light went away. Decided, well - I'll just keep it in 2, and drive it home, and keep my fingers crossed. It made it home, but stalled again in my driveway, lol. Did some inspection, and I had oil all over the place under the hood on the drivers side.

Today, I picked up an oil pressure gauge. Just installed it and checked the oil pressure, and to my surprise, it was 80 PSI at idle!!!! Also, I revved it up, and at 3500 RPM it was at 100 PSI, and kept climbing. I just read thru the shop manual, and oil pressure spec is 14.5 PSI at idle, and 49 PSI at 4000 RPM. 99 PSI max. What is going on here? Am I looking at a sticking pressure relief valve?


It should be noted though - I did use (1) bottle of engine oil stop leak, in a hackjob effort to get this engine to stop leaking oil for another 10k-15k before i could think about motor swapping it.

 

I guess this is on your 960? You added the stop lean before or after this problem? Sounds like you blew a head gasket, have you checked for fluid transfer?

 

Turns out - the stupid plastic side of the heater control valve cracked and ran it out of coolant - ie., I overheated it. The cloud of 'smoke' i saw behind me wasn't actually oil (well, part of it might still have been), but mostly coolant. So, after replacing that with just a plastic coupler (removing it from the system - the stupid things are pointless anyways), I fired it up and ran it for about 25 minutes. Once it got fully up to temp, oil pressure, slowly but surely, dropped down to ~25 PSI at idle. There's gotta be a blockage somewhere. Going to try draining some of the oil and adding a quart of Marvals Mystery oil to try to breakup anything that might be in there, especially effecting the pressure relief valve

And FWIW - there is no coolant or oil mixing.


I'm also getting a coolant temp sensor code. Going to unplug it tomorrow since the motor is still fairly warm, and check to make sure at least that the wiring back there isn't damaged. The wiring on this engine harness sucks, there are breaks in the insulation all over the place. Keep your fingers crossed I can get at least a few more months out of this motor before I have to seriously think about swapping. I'd like to be able to gather the swap parts on MY timeline - not the cars