Well better enjoy me then while I am here!

 

Hello again!
So I re-torqued all the manifold bolts and voila!
No more burning steam!!!! But now I have another issue.....

My Oil pressure will randomly drop to zero and often times won't jump back up.
I made a trip into town to pick up some spark plug cables (the SOB that I bought this truck from had jerry-rigged the cables on and when I changed the plugs I noticed them.) and Made it about 3/4 of the way (its about a 20 minute drive) when the pressure tanked and I pulled off to the side of the road.

Short story is she has plenty of oil in her, I have no mechanical gauge to check the sender unit, and I'm starting to want to push this truck off a cliff (and by that I mean yank the engine, bench the truck and wait until money flows my way and throw a 4Bt in it).

while i'm here can some one tell me how much gumption a 318 should have?
It feels like the truck is laden with about 4000lbs going up-hill all the time. I don't think this is right, but could I be wrong?

 

Should have more power than that... BTW if you yank the 318 I would be happy to take it! Sounds to me like your oil pump screen got clogged... To clean that you would have to drop the oil pan... And if you do that check the pump while you're at it.

 

Yeah, I figured it should have more umph than that.

I don't think you want this one, when I pulled the intake to replace the plenum....It was like the valley of death, so much crusted up gunk, I can only imagine what the rest of the beast looks like.

So if since i replaced the plenum, where could the loss of power be coming from?

I'm almost 100% sure the trani is fine, though I should mention that the truck is lifted and running over-sized tires (Not swampers or anything, just not stock). I'm pretty sure the rear-end has been re-geared for it, at 70mph I'm barely hitting 2000 RPM's.

The truck only has 140000 on the odo...Any help?

 

if the top was crusty, then you can bet your pick up screen is sludged up too. What do your compression numbers look like? Test and post results. I didn't read back, but did you do anything with the cat and 02 sensors after plenum repair?

 

No, seriously, I am interested. I have been looking for a junk engine that I can experiment with that isn't too expensive in case something goes wrong...

 

I have not touched the cat/sensors yet, Money has yet to flow my way The only thing I have done is reset the ECU.

and as far as the pickup screen goes, does it just pull off once I drop the pan? and what should my numbers look like for the Compression?

Thanks again,
-Jake