I was on the highway on monday, and a couples of minutes after passing a car I start hearing my engine pinging badly, I look down at my oil presure gauge and watch it drop to zero!! So I immediatly turn the engine off and pull over. At this point I'm thinking it's the oil pump bc the engine did not give any type of symptoms before this (the engine has 75k on it). They tow it to the garage and they figure maybe it's the oil filter that's clogged so they change my oil (this is on tuesday). Start the engine and they say it ran perfectly with high oil pressure until the engine got hot and then the pressure dropped to 0. I'm going to tow the car home tonight, does this sound like the engine needs a complete rebuilt?? (it's a '94 LT1)

 

its intresting that the pressure is fine on startup...

i suggest you make sure your pickup didnt fall off.

could explain the "pining" and the lack of oil pressure..

jack on side of the car up as high as your jack will go and bang adound on the pan...

if you dont hear anything, drain the oil and knock around again

 

"pickup"? Is that something to do with the oil pump?

 

It might be toast but its hard to say from what info you gave. Your oil pump could be shot, and it could be your sending unit. You say the car runs good when its cool as in no pinging, ticking, and knocking. If you have that much crap in your filter im sure the oil pump screen is looking the same way. It all depends how long you drove it with no oil pressure, and how much friction and damage could have been done. Im sure your lifters will be ticking but many times you can pump them back up( i have used tranny flued many times for this on all types of cars/trucks).

Bill

 

http://www.stevensparts.com/images/F...R%20PICKUP.JPG

plugs into the oil pump and sucks up oil...
kind of like the extention on a vac cleaner

 

For the running good when it's cold that's what they told me, I'll know for sure tonight when I get the car bck. Right now it's about 65-70 miles away where it broke down.

 

thats a really low mileage for a 94 lt1, mine has 112,000 with just the usual tap in the heads when its cold.so i doubt your motor is done unless the broken oil pump caused too much friction

 

Also by the time I shut the engine down it was at about 100-105, it did not seem to have time to overheat (I was told if it did overheat then that would of been worse).

 

If I need to rebuilt the engine I was thinking of getting one at the scrap yard. Could I put any year of lt1 in my car or do I need to stick ODB1 on this?

 

You all obviusly haven't been reading my recent posts. My 97SS with only 8 grand on the clock pulled the same crap a few sundays ago.

With little warning, it started knocking, loss of power and oil pressure.

Car had never been abused. Now I am 4700.00 poorer and working on breaking in a new short block.

Don't know what happened, and of course, the mech. who did all my work probably wouldn't say if they had screwed something up.

Only thing that I can come up with is maybe when they installed my ported heads recently, they might have over did with the RTV on sealing the intake and maybe the RTV clogged the oil pickup or some damn thing like that.

Guess I will never know. I do understand though.

 

4700$ for an engine rebuild? I'm currently looking at about 2100$ to have a complete rebuilt, the only thing they keep is the block unless it's cracked.

 

$2100.00? I paid 1750.00 for a new lt1, 4-bolt main short block including shipping (which I believe is a VERY good price.

Add new lifters, gaskets, AC recharge, fluids, installing all the stuff from the old block to the new one after pulling the old block and installing the new one.

All in all I believe $4700 is reasonable.

I would still think that even using your old block that with parts and labor you'd be looking at more than 2100. And is that 2100 Canadian? Hell of a deal.

 

- 4 bolt splayed billet main cap conversion

- Eagle 4340 forged steel crankshaft

- Eagle 4340 forged H-Beam connecting rods

- SRP forged pistons (flat top/dish top depending on application)

- JE Plasma Moly ring set

- Clevite 77 race bearings

- Melling high volume oil pump

- Fully balanced and blueprinted

- Custom hydraulic roller camshaft designed for customer’s goals
- GM LT4 Extreme Duty timing chain set with oversized crank sprocket

- Fully assembled short block

$4295.00 plus shipping (engine core required)






Robbed Blind

 

yep, 2100$ canadian. They do about 50-100 motors a day. They pass the block along a mini assembly line of about 20 guys that install different things on the engine.

 

BTW, 2100$ is all included, removal of old one, installation and tunning.