argh.
oil pump seemed to have broke over weekend.
garage sauggests about 15 hours work. $1500, seems high
Get another estimate.
What motor?
~Michael
Guess it doesn’t matter what motor. Attached are the labor rates for all available motors. Simply find your motor on the chart, read across to find how many hour, multiply that by your local labor rate, add parts (pump, gaskets, oil), and any applicable tax.
Seems a little high to me.
~Michael
What about details?
An oil pump “breaking” is a bit unusual.
What happened? Oil light on, continued engine operation, knocking, engine seizure, engine still reasonably full of oil, etc.?
Does this 1500 include a crank kit?
its the eddie baer v8
woke up Saturday morning, driving my daughter to soccer game, noticed harder sounds, flutter to clanking. oil not too low, but wound up stalling, cut power.
had some oil just to top off and symptom subsided momentarily, also stuck out of nowhere. Stalled again after repeat of above, got towed.
garage doesnt believe there is engine damage, no smoke on starting, but oil not being distributed.
says uncommon, costly job , his “book” suggesting 14.5 hours, all parts total = $1500
lots of money for old 99, yet honestly despite people being harsh on fords, the truck has treated my family well.
76k miles
do hear once one thing goes then others start at same time…
I’m sorry, but I have to comment on two of your statements…Ford being good quality and the vehicle giving you great service…yet you only have 76k miles…Wait until the car reaches 250k miles and tell me how GREAT the service is. The $1500 you’ll be spending is more then I put in my 98 Pathfinder with OVER 300k miles.
thanks for the perspective on your investment. I am not getting too religous on brands right now but glad you feel you’ve made the right choice. I have heard bad things about Fords on autos that havent nearly reached the miles I have, so I guess I was agreeing with your assessment on general industry experiences and highlighting that I might have broken past the usual Ford yield
I was looking for some validation from some folks with more experience than me to ensure there isnt anything else this could be and is work/hours estimate in line
The complaint is still unclear to me.
You “topped off” the oil. Well, how low was it, how much oil did you add, did it fill it to the MAX level, and did that red oil light come on?
Was it rattling, clanking, or whatever when it “stalled” the second time?
If the oil light was on, the engine was clanking, etc. then you DO have engine damage. The only question is to what degree.
Smoking has nothing to do with it; the problem will be in the crankshaft and cam bearings, etc.
I’m still dubious about a broken oil pump being the cause of this.
Exact details need to be provided to help in any attempt to figure out what’s going on.
I actually own and drive Ford products and get long service out of them. As I always state, the vast majority of problems are not caused by the vehicle, but the owner.
thanks
i threw in a couple quarts and might have overfilled a little bit. yet, the noise was the same and stalled both times. the oil pressure seemed to go back and forth from L to about midway but mostly stayed at L. it was clanking, no smoke or overheat. not read hard noise but enought htat you knew something was definately wrong. I wish I could help you help me more but then again that is why i stumbled on this blog.
I second OK’s post. There is more to this story…Oil pump failure is EXTREMELY rare in ANY engine. They may get weak, but they seldom suddenly fail…
Step one. Before ANY repairs are made, check actual oil pressure with a shop gauge.
The factory gauge used in Ford vehicles functions like an idiot light (which you also should have). It just indicates pressure or no pressure, not how much pressure…
gosh, I think I am being called an Idiot.
anyway, the factory indicator was mostly on L, but it temporary would go up to mid level, but jump back down. Its an analogue.
so I will ask the garage if he tested the pressure…
caddy/ok
by the way, what could be the other top two things if not a broken pump? the garage did admit that he has seen 4 in the past 10years. but if I want to guide him into thinking it could be something else, what are the top potential alternate issues?
A little searching shows that there have been some failures of the oil pump gears on the 4.6. The complainees are generally of the “road racer” persuasion which should not apply to your vehicle.
They mention that the gears are powdered metal so I would say that it is possible anyway for the pump drive gears to fail.
Changing the pump is a major undertaking and to be honest, I would consider the timing chain/tensioner setup at the same time.
However, this chain/tensioner setup is expensive.
Since the story is still a bit sketchy to me, I can only add a couple of comments.
One is that if the oil pump is questionable, any problem is easily verified by connecting an external gauge and checking the oil pressure, if any.
The second point is this. If the engine lost oil pressure and was making noise my feeling is that there is crankshaft bearing damage to some degree.
This means that if you spend a small fortune on the repair the vehicle may start up, knock, and lose oil pressure especially when warmed up.
It’s also possible that problems may not surface until later on - 6 months or a year down the road.
If the oil pump legitimately failed, and this were my vehicle, I would drop the oil pan and pull some rod and main bearing caps. This would give a general idea of how the bearing surface looks and if any underlayment is showing then I would not advise a new pump, chain, or anything else.
It would be decision time on a new engine.
JMHO anyway and good luck. Hope this works out.
guys - hearing this 2nd hand from my wife, i am at an airport gate waiting…
good news, it seems under further investigation our guy believes its not the pump but some plastic ring that has been known to break apart and remnants desolve into filter, clog oil distribution some how. I will take the good news, not sure what this means to total cost and the level of accuracy,
heard of this/make sense?
I can’t think of a plastic “ring”, but maybe the problem is the gasket that is located between the engine block and oil filter adapter.
This gasket is plastic (about 4MM thick) and has rubber inserts; both for the oil flowing in and out of the filter AND for coolant, which also flows through this gasket.
The only thing I can think of would be if the rubber inserts were deteriorating and if this is the case the engine oil should be carefully inspected for coolant contamination as the oil and coolant passages are about thisclose together.
ok, so we got the truck back 10 hours to diagnose and fix new timing guide left and right. no new pump. new oil pump screen and some ultra lube in the case that the lifters do not cease the tick/tick. and they don’t.
i guess i might have damaged the lifters and the sad thing is i really had no warning.
seems to be functioning, pressure fine, except for the embarrasing tick, and I dont sense further driving will bring the lube into the lifters and fix the noise.
soo - is there a trick to taking the tick off the lifters or is this another expense?
guys, i appreciate your time
That lifter business might be a toss-up. If a lifter (actually valve lash adjuster)is suspected of sticking a bit then I would add a can of SeaFoam to the engine oil and see what happens within 30 miles or so.
Was that valve train tick there before or is this a recent development?
I think this vehicle has variable valve timing and I was wondering if there is a problem in this area, or possibly a faulty cam lobe. Also in a “I think” mode, its seems to me the cams are made of powdered metal and maybe there’s a problem with a lobe due to oil starvation.
Maybe someone more in the know on the metallurgical details will weigh in on this.