Hi All:
I just wanted to let you know about an oil system problem I had on my Ford Taurus and maybe get some feedback.
The problem cropped up about a year ago. About 200 miles into a 450 mile round trip drive the oil light on my 2000 3.0 12 valve EFI Taurus SE came on. I called a buddy and he rented a car dolly and towed me home.
I do regular oil changes between 3K and 5K. if I can’t do them my wife takes the car into a shop and has it done.
I ended up swapping out the engine with a used engine and I haven’t done much since until this weekend when I took the oil pan off the old 3.0. I found a bunch of tiny pieces of some kind of fiber board gasket in the oil pump screen. The largest was about 5/8" long, 1/8" thick and about 3/16" wide. There was also some crud built up in the oil pump screen around the gasket pieces, about what I would expect after 180K even with good oil changes.
The pump itself was in spec (I checked it with feeler gages).
Most of the gaskets I have seen on the Taurus oil system are rubber so I am not sure where this fiber board gasket could have come from.
I understand that sudden oil pressure loss is a fairly common problem with 2K Taurus’s having over 150K miles.
Anyone know where the gasket came from? Is this left over from the manufacturing process or is there a gasket breaking down that I missed?
I am probably going to rebuild the engine in the future, that could take a year or so with my schedule.
I was just wondering if anyone knew anything about this issue or if anyone had seen the same problem on other Taurus’s.
Thanks
A bad guess is that the fiber is from the sprocket teeth of the camshaft sprocket. They were sometimes made of phenolic which could be a fiber, plastic material. You remove the timing cover and you will know if I’m right or not right. Never wrong.