So a couple weeks ago I was driving home from school and everything was fine and then suddenly it hit the fan. I got a check gauges light, the engine knocked, and it showed 0 oil psi. I shut her down ASAP but apparently it was too late. There is metal in the oil. I assume the short block is a goner, and the heads questionable.

I had the car towed back to my place. I lack the time, knowledge, patience, and money to do anything with it anytime soon. I will probably get a beater for the moment and let it sit. I was thinking about getting a long block or even a turn key from:

http://www.golenengineservice.com/html/lt1_lt4.html

Seems somewhat expensive though. Then I would also likely have to spend ~2,000 to have some place put it in. I live in Tallahassee, FL, in case anyone knows of a good place to go around here.

Does anyone have a better idea that may be cheaper, or simpler? Rebuilding it myself would work well, but I live in an apartment complex and don't have the necessary tools, so I don't think that will be an option.

Just thought I'd get some ideas, because I am out of them.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like you may have spun a bearing. Does not mean you "blew the block". Does not necessarily mean the heads are damaged. Probably a good idea to tear it down before you jump to any conclusions.

 

Certainly possible. I was always under the impression that a spun bearing was not worth the effort to rebuild though. I don't know exactly what happened.

I had AAA tow it to one of there approved places. They looked at it and said there was water in the oil and said I need a new engine. However, I did a few drive bys when they had it in there possession. They didn't touch it until about 3pm (I shut it down and had it towed there the previous night after they were closed). On my third drive by they had finally done something with it, the hood was up. Shortly after they started it up to move it to the front of the place. I wonder if that screwed it up, as I shut it down within a minute, when there was surely residual oil. After sitting for 18 hours or so, the oil would have gone to the bottom, and them starting it up may have made it worse. They said I needed a new engine (along with ignition, radiator, etc, I stopped listening after that) and it would be ~7400.

At the very least, the place is incompetent. They knew darn well it had little to no oil pressure and was probably knocking, yet they ran it. Unfortunately, I cannot prove they made it worse.

I had it towed then to the dealer who said there was metal in the oil (not just water as the other place said), and it was indeed reading 0 psi. I then towed it back to my apartment. The dealer said it would be ~2200 in labor + at least 3000 for parts, for a stock LT1. I figure I may as well put in a 383 for that.

It will still run, as I saw the first shop run it. It has been my understanding that if it still runs its not necessarily toast. Only after it runs for a while without oil and it blows up is it a goner.

How would I know if I spun a bearing? Rip it apart? My concern is that metal in the oil can mean quite a bit. Crank, cam, piston, rod (though that seems unlikely). There is no oil leaking, so I can't imagine the block/head are cracked.

Again, I live in an apartment complex, so I am pretty limited in what I can do. I can rip off the intake manifold/heads, but that's about it. I can't really get under it.

Honestly I think that either the oil pump or a head gasket blew. I mean, I saw 0 oil pressure on the highway and shut it down immediately, coasting into the nearest place off the road, running it for no more then a minute. I cannot imagine that ruining the shortblock, unless something catastrophic happened. It seems more likely that the place it got brought to ruined it by running it w/o oil pressure, but I cannot prove that.

Either way, there isn't much I can do now but accept the loss. Metal in the oil is never good. How can I know if I spun a bearing?

Again, thanks for any input. This poor college student is in quite a crappy situation.

EDIT:

Not to mention the darn thing has just under 145,000 miles on it. Seems awfully early for it to blow up. All the more reason I suspect it was a simple oil pump/head gasket problem that got made worse by incompetence. Worse yet, there is not much of a car culture here, or competition , so I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

I would think you could get a junk yard pull out with less than 100k for under 1k and have a local independent shop install it for under 1k. Most junk yards offer a 30 or 60 day warranty.

Go to www.car-part.com to search for engines in your area.

You always take a chance with junkyard motors, but sometimes you can get a gem. I pulled a motor from a core dumpster once at a junkyard that had under 1k miles on it for $100. It had burned valve covers and they didn't want to mess with cleaning it up. I ran it for 30k miles in my grand prix and sold the car last week, still running strong.

 

honestly i would look for a different car before you pour $6000 into that thing. you can get a C5 Vette with 35k miles on it for $15000. divide that by 60 months and it should be affordable

 

If the oil pump went out, it is easy to spin a bearing. Unfortunately, the only way to tell is to pull the pan and then some caps, which requires that you raise the engine a bit to remove the pan.
If you pulled the heads, you could inspect the cylinders and heads, but not much more.
Is there no where you could take it where you could do the work yourself? If the cylinders looked fairly good and you discovered it was the bearings, it would still mean a full engine rebuild. Unless the damage was too great, you could have the crank turned and rods replaced.
Labor is what will kill you, as you have discovered.
As Adam96Z stated, a reasonable price for someone to just do an engine swap is closer to $1000. That would be a complete engine for complete engine, not having to move things like cams, heads, etc.

 

I agree $1000 is alot more appropriate for a swap. I would also see about taking it somewhere that will inspect the bottom end for you.

If you do have to replace the motor, the prices at places like Golen or CPE or some of the others you will here discussed here are not that bad. Slightly more than a standard rebuild but you are getting better parts/service than you would with a cheapo rebuild.

The other option would be to keep an eye on Craigslists/ebay/local papers to find someone who is selling one cheap. I bought a old wood hauler for $350 just for the 350 core in it and that untouched 350 survived in one of my race cars for 2 years worth of dirt track racing. Never know what you will find.

 

Hey man you can buy used short blocks from hawks third gen parts on line for five hundred dollars for under 100000 miles on them and if you have a friend who has an a frame this is possibly a cheap rebound to having your car running again. Trughfully i wouldnt buy a turn key motor due to the expensiveness you would be better off buying a long block and putting your outside parts back on you can get longblocks for seventeen hundred dollars just take a look at carolina machine engines online they have good deals also on longblocks, so yeah many things you can do but buying the short block from hawks and installing it yourself would be around eight hundred dollars with the new gaskets and stuf but what was said earlier about tearing down to ind out exactly what went wrong isnt a bad idea besides you will be pulling it one way or another.

 

I spun the #3 rod bearing in my TA around 7,000 miles ago and shes still running...sounds like a wood chipper...but shes still running non the less. Also, this could be your oil pump, as they can sound almost exactly the same as a rod bearing.

 

Perhaps, but metal chips in the oil indicates something more serious.

 

"I got a check gauges light, the engine knocked, and it showed 0 oil psi"

If all you heard was a sudden loud knock, then 0psi oil pressure, a missfire, and other random problems that usually means you broke a rod which can easily break into the cylinder wall coolant passage in which most cases the rod would puncture the oil pan and you would have oil and coolant leaking on the ground. Usually a spun brearing will end up creating a broken rod if you keep driving on it, and spun bearings can go a long time depending how loud the radio is and how you drive it.

The other scenario is you spun a bearing and clogged up the oil pump. A single spun bearing will not drop all of your oil pressure. In this case the coolant problem doesnt fit unless something broke.

The last scenario is the cam chain or gears broke, which will immediately kill oil pressure and will drive the valves into the cylinder head puncturing the coolant passages. This is very rare.

Allowing the car to sit after whatever happened will not make anything worse.

 

Well, nothing is leaking. I checked the road behind me that I was driving on, as well as under the car after it had been sitting for quite some time and nothing was leaking.

Unfortunately there is nowhere I can take it to really get a good look at it.

There definitely was water in the oil, but as far as metal goes, that's what the dealer told me. I should check that out myself.

EDIT

Also, I was under the impression that if I spun a bearing the block is toast anyway, or at least not worth fixing. Is this not true?

 

If there is water and metal in the oil then the most likely scenario is the it blew a head gasket, put water in the oil, the foamy diluted oil wiped out a rod bearing. It is possible it spun a main bearing, It is possible it has a cracked block, it is possible the oil pump screen fell out of the pump, it is possible for a lot of things but you really need to tear into it before decididing if the whole thing is junk or you just need a crank turned and a replecement rod.

 

It doesn't sound like a bad situation on the engine. Sadly to do yourself probably requires at least $500 in tools to get the engine out, etc, etc. but the parts should be only another $500 if it is only gaskets and bearings. Commit a week to it at a friends garage and pay him for the space to tear out and rebuild.