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Oil pressure

R

Riggernut

New member
Well after 150000 miles of trouble free motering she's (1987 944 Turbo) finaly thrown me a curve ball. Heard screeching from the front of the car then lost all power steering and the oil pressure started flickering up and down. Drove a bit further to stop in a safe area and lost all oil pressure. The engine sounded tappety before swiching off.

Luckily the AA man managed to recover all the parts 1 unsnapped belt, 1 pulley, 1 bolt and washer, I believe these are from the oil pump. Looks like the bolt had vibrated loose. Took it to a garage who have refitted these items, however there still is not enough oil pressure to extinguish the light.

Do you have to prime the oil pump again, or run the car for a period of time to build up the oil pressure?
Am i missing anything else obvious. I realise that something could have sheared engine to oil pump side, hence no pressure but have heard no no bang or rumblings.


 
anyone? had a little search and found you can prime the oil system by compressed air down the dipstick tube. Can anyone expand on this.
 
Clarks garage says: "The oil pumps on these cars are generally bullet proof. When they go bad, it's generally the result of losing prime to the oil pump which can destroy not only the pump but, the main and rod bearings as well. Again, this is one of those things that you can't really test for. All you can really do is remove the pump, disassemble it, and inspect the pump gears." Could the belt coming off the bottom crank shaft pulley to the oil pump cause a loss of prime?
 
The bottom pulley bolt needs to be tight for theoil pump to drive and generate pressure, if you lost pressure with the engine running it might have destroyed the main and big end beaings. Is the bottom puley properly tight now? It needs to be as the p7oil pump rie is taken from a sleeve over the crank, held by the bottom pulley. Tony
 
Thanks Tony, an update.. Botton crank pulley torqued to 155 lbs ft and belt tensioned 5mm deflection as per manual. We have 3 bar pressure at 3000RPM but drops off in and out of the red light. No bottom end rattles only noisy tappets which suggests the oil is still not getting to the top. Any suggestions for a reduced pressure? If i have a look at the oil filter and find foreign objects this would suggest engine damage , If no foreign objects then a damaged oil pump could be the problem. does this sound feasible?
 
Of course. Basically it's only different in the ancillaries. The Devil is in the detail though and things like the ECU is different and not all 250 ECUs will even plug straight in. The 220 bottom end might actually be better if its one with forged rods in any case. As Tony states the front pulley is the key and presumably yours came off. You don't have to prime the oil pump in any special way and it should quiet the top end quickly if all is well so I assume something else is still awry if the pulley is back as it should be and you still have a problem. Even so the idea of swapping an engine is drastic as it may be something relatively minor and you won't get a good 250 engine for £200 like you might with one for something like an Escort.
 
Thanks Fen, I have the car back in my garage now and something is still awry. There is no debris in the oil filter. The only solution i can come up with is the pulley and spacer have worn and the bolt has bottomed out, no amount of tightning will solve. Or the oil pump is goosed. Worst case scenario is a rebuild and I've been suitably scared off from an independant for rebuild costs (£2000-£4000 not a realistic price!). I can source a new engine for £1200 with history. How long to fit @£60 p/h. Never had to get my hands that dirty with any of my cars engine wise and only carried out basic maintenance. Looks like i'm going to be learning pretty fast. How muxh of the engine can you take apart with it in situ?
 
It's not a massive job to replace the engine compared with rebuilding it, partly because there is very little you would do when replacing it that you wouldn't have to do in a rebuild as well. It's not a good first time rebuild proposition though I'd suggest as it has a number of unusual features and traps you can fall into. Based on the time I've spent with my indie and my car I'd say 8-10 hours would see the engine swapped, but there will be extra time if there are any issues with things like an ECU swap due to loom differences, and if you have to swap ancillaries between engines then that is time, too.
 
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