Oil Light

Maintenance/Repairs
1

I own a Land Rover Discovery II 2004, 109,000 miles, and blew a chunk of front cover gasket out last week, causing me to lose oil like BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Made it home a few miles away, no funny sounds, although oil was extremely low. Replaced the gasket with The Right Stuff, and not a drop of oil leaked out of the cover on starting up, but my oil light came on again, even though the oil was full.

I had not primed the oil pump on putting the front cover back on (it’s in the front cover), as I had replaced the oil pump just a few weeks prior and primed it then. I now understand I maybe should have packed it with vaseline again.

So today I turned over the engine several times with the spark plugs disconnected to prime the oil and started it up again. Oil light didn’t come on right away, but after about thirty seconds it did.

I replaced the oil pressure switch and oil pressure light did not come on at all, after running it several minutes. Felt really great. Turned it off, went to grab something and then take it for a test drive, and on starting it up again, light came on! But when I revved the engine, sitting in my driveway in Neutral, it would go off. Just on idle it came on. So I revved it up a little to get the pressure up, and drove off and the light stayed off completely on my test drive of about ten minutes, low and high speeds, not coming on again at all, even at idle.

So my oil light seems to be off for now, but I’m not confident.

I smelled a little bit of burning oil on pulling back in to my driveway, but this may have just been some residual oil on my frame and car, right? Temps on the Rover get up to 200.

Could my new oil pump have gotten cracked by running out of oil last week? Does that happen from low oil?

Any ideas on how to be sure I’ve fixed this problem for good?

Matt

2

All you can do is remove the oil pressure sending unit, and in its place install an oil pressure gauge.

Then cross your fingers that the oil pressure is within specs.

Tester

3

Seeing as how you’ve replaced the oil pressure sending unit following Tester’s recommendation is your next and best move.

4

Given you drove it home puking oil and the oil level was very low, it is entirely possible you damaged a bearing on the crank or rods. Rod most likely as they generally get oiled last.

Your description sound like the oil gets warm, thins out and now you don’t have enough pressure at idle. Confirm it with a real gauge as others suggest. That will confirm the problem, the solution likely requires you to drop the oil pan and inspect every bearing. If you are lucky, you may get away with just replacing the bearings and not re-machining the crank requiring engine removal.

5

I would have to concur with all of the above. The way you lose oil pressure in this instance is if you run the engine out of oil or have insufficient oil…the bearing surfaces in the engine get Hollowed out…meaning they are no longer as tight as they should be. Many issues with this little bit of information… You wont be able to produce and hold proper oil pressure anymore…and major failures will follow.

All depends on the results of your manual oil pressure gauge…if that reads low on startup…and gets lower when hot… You are witnessing the damage done.

When an oil light illuminates…the procedure is very simple… Immediate SHUT DOWN of the Engine… No more…no less. When the oil light illuminates for a valid reason…milliseconds are what count…Miles and or minutes are completely unacceptable.

This is an old and well discussed topic…and each one of those discussions produces the results above.

Hopefully you got lucky…but the info you provided does not bode well…not well at all.

Blackbird

6

The old Buick 215 aluminum V8…It might be time for a new set of main and rod bearings…If you just want to nurse it along for a while, you might try 15/40 grade oil…

7

I was just staring at that Old Aluminum Buick engine in a Range Rover in the salvage yard… Pull your own parts…engines cost 150 a pop… Or used to…they probably 200 now…but still thats a screaming deal on an engine.

Im shocked at how many years they are STILL getting out of that 1960’s Buick Engine…it has more manifestations and configurations than most Hollywood Movie Stars… Its still going strong…

I remember being fascinated by that Buick Engine some years back when I was getting into its history and lineage. Buick installed it into the Starfire was it? It was a very brief debut in the USA market I recall…but they sold the rights to the Brits…and boy did they RUN with it…

Do they still manufacture this engine I wonder… I have to look it up.

Blackbird

8

Back in the 80s a friend of mine stuffed one of those 215 Buicks into a Triumph TR-7; a.k.a The Wedge.

Another friend back in the day had a 60s era Tempest 4 door sedan with the 215 and that car would get 30 MPG on the open road while loaded down.
Not shabby at all for a contact point, carbureted dinosaur.

9

I remember being fascinated by that Buick Engine some years back when I was getting into its history and lineage. Buick installed it into the Starfire was it?

The '60s odd fire Buick V6 was installed in the “Special”. If I remember correctly some of them also had the air-cooled automatic transmission, circa '63 I think. By '64 they had the 2 speed 300 series transmission ( I think ). And the V6 may have made it to '65, but I’m not sure of that, either.

The “Starfire” was Olds I think.

10

Oh yes @JayWB you are right ! Oops… I was confusing my “S” car names and mfg’s for a minute there… Too much info rattling around in my Noggin these days… Need to do a data dump and aquire new info…the last time involved cracking a full face helmet near in half…tho I dont recommend that to anyone… Haha