Got to the bottom of Al's motor failure...

It was the oil pressure sender. No, seriously!

The sender unscrewed itself as was only held in by a couple of threads. All the oil was slowly forced out until the motor was without oil. Of course no oil = BANG!

The rod on #1 snapped. The bottom of the rod is gone. The top is wedged in the cylinder bore for #1. There is a large gaping hole in the pan and extensive external damage. It looks like the rod knocked a hole all the way to the balance shaft housing on the driver's side.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the idiot light connection came undone as the sender unscrewed. Thus, Al never got the red "You're screwed" light.

-bj

ouch! Ive been there but it just broke a rod and took out both sides of the block.

loftygoals wrote:


Dang,
Never heard of that one, but I guess it could happen. Of course one you lose oil bad things will happen in the motor.

I had my oil pressure gauge (original factory gauge) fail at the track and it cost me a session while I trouble shot it. I then had to ignore it for the weekend and just hope.

My solution was to add a mechanical oil pressure gauge with a 30 pound pressure switch at the gauge so I did not have to rely on the factory stuff. My only issue was a small, weeping leak in the fitting at the gauge that I had to tighten up.

The downside is that you have a tube coming into the compartment that could be a source of hot oil if the tube/fitting/gauge was ever breached. I made the decision to accept that in exchange for having a mechanical gauge that was independent of electrical issues. The gauge is in a place that is very easy to see, as well.

Having an oil temperature gauge can also show issues if oil levels start to go down so I put one of them in as well with a high oil warning light to draw my attention to the gauge. It is electrical, however.

I also hurt an engine because I could not see the water temperature gauge very well because of the steering wheel. I cracked the radiator and had a slow leak that final emptied all the water. I installed a new water temp. gauge next to the oil pressure gauge (with a new high temp warning light as well) so that it was very visible and now I check them both with one glance.

Installing a new engine might be a good time to re-think your gauge situation.

Big Dog