6th Gen ('00-'05): 2001 monte SS 3.8L oil and engine problem that started this morning.
#1
2001 monte SS 3.8L oil and engine problem that started this morning.
Over the past like 4 days when I started the car and ran it, it sounded like lifter rattling was going on, come this morning I am going down the road and my RPM shoot up to 3-4k idle in drive and my oil pressure gauge is reading so low it's like it isn't working. I changed the oil same as always about 200 miles ago and noticed nothing strange. I am half worried it's my timing chain or the oil pump. Any advice would be appreciated.
#2
IMO its unlikely to be either of those. If the timing chain broke, the engine would die instantly as there would be nothing to open the valves.
The oil pump doesn't really have a typical failure mode. It's physically driven off the crank snout (which passes through the center of the pump) via the lower timing gear. If the crank is spinning, so is the pump. Certainly they can wear over time, but it wouldn't go from good to not good immediately. The only way that happens is with a catastrophic failure (and catastrophic failure at the crank snout would be obvious).
I'd probably start by getting a mechanical oil pressure gauge and hooking it up to confirm pressure. Last thing you want to do is being trying to crank and run it to troubleshoot what happened if you've really got no pressure. It's very common for those gauges (and the sender) to act up, but if you were hearing real lifter noise, I'd definitely confirm with a real gauge.
Then Id just go into typical troubleshooting- plugging in a scan tool to see what the sensors are saying, then physical inspection from there based off of the lifter sound you'd heard + whatever your scan tool may have pointed to.
The oil pump doesn't really have a typical failure mode. It's physically driven off the crank snout (which passes through the center of the pump) via the lower timing gear. If the crank is spinning, so is the pump. Certainly they can wear over time, but it wouldn't go from good to not good immediately. The only way that happens is with a catastrophic failure (and catastrophic failure at the crank snout would be obvious).
I'd probably start by getting a mechanical oil pressure gauge and hooking it up to confirm pressure. Last thing you want to do is being trying to crank and run it to troubleshoot what happened if you've really got no pressure. It's very common for those gauges (and the sender) to act up, but if you were hearing real lifter noise, I'd definitely confirm with a real gauge.
Then Id just go into typical troubleshooting- plugging in a scan tool to see what the sensors are saying, then physical inspection from there based off of the lifter sound you'd heard + whatever your scan tool may have pointed to.
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