Oil Pressure Gauge and Engine death

CL (dnoyeB) Gilbert · 2006-01-20T16:29:06+00:00

Trying to get some lessons learned from my first car 'death.'To make it short, the oil gauge started behaving curiously to me probably last year this time. But since the oil light didnt come on, and the pressure seemed high enough, nothing seemed wrong. This turned out to be bad because the odd pressure behavior was probably a sign of some engine parts that have to do with oil pressure going bad.So the engine is shot. Loud rapping and knocking etc. And now I can see the oil pressure gauge is doing an extreme version of what it was doing last year. needing higher RPM to sustain higher pressure. I couldn't have recognized it without ever seeing it before.The question is, my new car has only the idiot light. Which of course never lit on my blazer since the oil was actually always there. If my engine parts start to wear out and pressure drops, how will I know it? Or am I out of luck without a gauge. I know the light will light when the pressure is low, but that didnt help the blazer because it was more 'odd' pressure behavior than low pressure.Would a good mechanic see the signs early enough?advice?

Jan 20, 2006 22 Replies

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<HLS 20 years ago

Gosh...is he dense?

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Don 20 years ago

Cutting open the old oil filter to look for metal is a great way to check the engine internals. You need to buy a cutter with blade wheels because a hacksaw or similar will obviously make so much metal debris as to render the inspection useless.

Don

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Nate Nagel 20 years ago

Not really. I just hacksawed a filter open last weekend as I changed the oil for the first time since I got my '55 coupe running. The metal chips from the cutting operation were localized to the bottom of the filter where I cut, so I just looked at the other end of the media.

That said, I am thinking of buying a cutter, just because it's a PITA to hacksaw through an oily round metal thing. I have a replaceable-cartridge type filter on my other older car so that one is easy to inspect, I just cut the cartridge open with a knife.

nate

(didn't notice anything unusual, other than a mess of nasty black sludginess, which I expected...)

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