Lately my temperature guage has been acting a bit wacky...

Sometimes it seems to heat up when I have the car at idle. This only happens when the car is hot and when the oil pressure drops. I had 5w-30 oil put in the engine on my last oil change and the oil pressure would drop to 0 at idle when the engine was hot. As soon as it dropped....there went my temp guage UP UP UP UP then to red.....So i put 2 bottles of lucas oil stabilizer and now it seems to hold the oil just above the red line (sometimes it hits red, but not often). Still though....it seems to heat up (sometimes) when the i'm idling....as soon as i step on the gas a little bit it drops back down to normal temp (i don't even have to be moving).

Also, my coolant seems to be disapearing somehow. I don't see any leakage anywhere so where the heck is it going?

I also have an oil leak somewhere and a faint tapping noise either comming from the exhaust or somewhere internally and car seems to chug sometimes when taking off. (like it will go, then like hesitate like it misfired a cylinder or soemthing)

Any advice?

I'm so frustrated with all these problems, so I am just thinking about rebuilding the engine and getting rid of them all with one hit!!!

 

Your oil pressure sounds pretty low. I would put on a mechanical gauge first to verify your oil pressure readings. Sounds like a rebuild is around the corner though.

 

Yeah i know....I saw in another thread though that 6psi of oil pressure is the minimum. But what type of oil is that with? Is it with 5w30? My oil pressure seems to change/improve with different thickness.

 

If your losing coolant somehow along with the other problems you describe I wonder if you could have a blown head gasket or cracked head. Coolant could be leaking into one or more of the cylinders, getting burnt off and causing the rough running condition. How many miles are on the car?

 

151k miles. Wouldn't I know if it had a blown head gasket? Wouldn't my oil be all bubbly?

 

Not always, sounds like it could be a popped gasket tho, does it push any smoke? (white smoke is an indicator) also you could check the pressure on the coolant system,

 

Wow, you described my car almost to a tee. I just picked up a '97 Z28 last week. I knew going into it that at the very least the head gaskets were blown, and possibly a cracked head. I only paid $1200 for the car and it's in great shape. Just backing it into the garage to pull the engine, there was about 8 ounces of water coming from the exhaust y where it comes together to go to the back of the car. Running rough and spitting out a misfire in multiple cylinders code. I pulled the engine out the bottom, very easy to do with simple hand tools. I'm doing a complete rebuild on my engine. I'm expecting to spend around $2k for the engine work/headers. This will be a great car once I get the engine rebuilt. Can't wait to go cruise it. The oil in my car was very milky, probably 50% water/oil mix.