Hey all.
First of all let me preface this by saying I am not a car guy. The last four-wheeled vehicle I owned was an early-70's Volvo 164, back in '93. Since then I've only owned motorcycles, and generally do the repairs myself coz it's easy to get to stuff.
But my lovely GF has a car, a 2001 Accent 4-door. Up until this spring, she hardly drove it for two years, and before that it was all highway. Now that she's started a job that requires her to spend a few hours/30 miles in stop n go traffic every day, her car's motor has started ticking. I took it to a reputable local shop for a free estimate, and he said lifters are damaged and the oil pressure is about half what it should be at idle, and low across the board.
Now, I know that oil pumps shouldn't be failing at 60K miles, and this certainly is part of the powertrain warranty. But I doubt she's going to be able to produce documentation that she was keeping up on the maintenance. Her ex-husband took care of it the first few years, and I'm taking care of it now, but there's that 3-year period in the middle... I'm wondering if the average dealer would be a stickler for full records in this case. It seems like it would take many years of poor maint to make an oil pump fail, and it wouldn't be the first thing to go if that were the case.
If they say no to a warranty fix, I'm going to try to tackle the oil pump replacement myself, or at least think about it. The lifters can tick away til the motor grenades (very subtle for now, hear it only while the car is in gear, and feathering the gas pedal around idle, with the windows rolled up, etc) for all I care, but I gotta do something about the oil pressure for now.
So how hard is it to get to? Is it even worth my time to go to Border's and get the Haynes manual to look at the procedure? Learned opinions sought.
Regards dred