I was slowing down for the stoplight by my apartment. Suddenly, the steering almost went out and I had a check gauges light. I noticed I had NO oil pressure! I should have check my rpm and everything, but I panicked and shut it down. I restarted the car and had perfect oil pressure. So I went ahead and turned into my apartment. The car seemed to run fine. It's about 1/4 mile from the front gate to my apartment building. When I got out of the car and popped the hood, there was some smoke coming from the front of the engine on the passenger side. I couldn't tell exactly where the smoke was coming from. I went ahead and took my beer and ice into the apartment and came back out with a fire extinguisher, just in case. The car was still a little smokey, and it smelled weird...almost like a burnt clutch. I'm thinking it could be a spun bearing. But then again, maybe not because it ran fine. Maybe the oil pump is going out. But where did the smoke come from? I didn't hear any valve rattle or anything like that. I know LS1s had oil pump issues. I checked the oil. It was a little low, but not low enough to cause a problem. I'm going to add a quart in a little while and crank it up. Maybe the oil pickup wasn't submerged or something. Who knows? Any ideas? Sending unit? Loose filter?

 

Your dipstick blew out

 

It was on tight when I popped the hood.

 

Even the tube going into the block???

 

...

 

Haven't checked that. I'm about to go take a third look at everything

 

it should be in there good, as there is a bolt and bracket to the block...Dipstick itself would of come out...

Hope he comes out with more findings once smoke and beer clear...

 

so i read through this again

does that not sound like the car stalled or almost stalled, could be an important part of the puzzle

at least the beer is ok

 

Yes, the car tried to stall...

and clutch smell...

this could be an indication of things to come....

 

The beer is safe

I'm not so sure the car tried to stall. I didn't check the rpm, but the car stayed alive. It didn't act like it wanted to die. It had the will to live.

I tried to check the tube, but because of the headers and stb, I couldn't trace it to the block. And unfortunately, I don't have a jack, so I can't get under it and look.

From what I could see, there was no oil anywhere under the hood. Everything looked clean. Also, all the wiring looked intact.

I went ahead and started the car. The oil pressure held steady at 50psi for a few minutes, and there was no smoke. So I shut her down.

This is confusing, and I'm scared to death to drive my car!

 

Perhaps faulty electrical connection somewhere in electrical system made a power hiccup, and burnt a fuse of some sort...

also OFF TOPIC...LOL @ mr murray intentionally causing fusable link to go out which put freddie into panic mode over dads l82 corvette going up in smoke...

 

I had been thinking along those lines too. It seems like if the pump was bad, it wouldn't die and come right back to life. The dipstick tube enters the back of the block...the smoke was in the front. The engine runs smooth and there's good pressure now, so I wouldn't expect internal damage. The smell was weird...it smelled sort of like propane. It's not going to be easy tracing all that wiring, but I think that's the next thing to do.

Thanks for the help, everybody. Any more suggestions are very appreciated

 

How many miles on the car? Is it the 98 in your sig??

Did you take a hard corner or stop aggressively hard before it happened or was it just normal driving??

My second guess other than the sub-par oil pump is the pick up O ring... THis little thing causes so many problems if/when it goes. The pick up tube bolt could have possibly backed out (not common)....


Me thinkey oil pump issues or pressure sending unit hiccup.. And you did the right thing to shut it down when you noticed NO oil pressure.

 

It's the 98 SS. It has 72k miles.

I'm beginning to think I had some sort of electrical short. Maybe a burnt wire or something. Maybe there was a momentary catastrophic failure of the electrical to the car, a momentary short in the wiring, thereby causing gauges to go to 0 and the engine to falter. I'm going to check it out in a little while. I'll let you know what I find.

 

After hearing some of the horror stories that people with 1998 LS1 f-bodies have had with the oil pump. I am checking that gauge pretty often when I'm out in the Camaro.