Curious, what weight/brand of oil are you running? At a minimum, I'd drain the oil and drop the oil pan. I suspect you may have a good bit of sludge in the pan and it may be getting into the oil pickup..

 

As long as you have the pan off, you could plastigage your bearings so you know what shape they're in.
Oil pressure just under 20 at idle is OK, but not going over 40 when revved is a bit low.

 

I'm running conventional O'Reilly's 10w30. I have also replaced a quart with that Marvelous Mystery oil additive when all this began, in hopes to solve my problem, the bottle claimed to clean all that sludge stuff up. Don't really know if it did what it said it would do or not. If I got to tear into it that much, wouldn't it be wise just to replace the oil pump since it has so many miles on it anyways?

 

Just now the gauge is reading 10 psi at idle, and for me to get it to 40, I have to rev to about 4 grand...not good.

 

Download the FSM here:
https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...e-manuals.html
It tells how to check your oil pump clearances to see if it's the culprit or not.

If it is, replace with a Melling oil pump, problem solved.
If not, plastigage your bearings. If worn replace with Clevite bearings.

Or it could be as simple as the pickup tube plugging up as stated.

You have a 4x4 or 2WD? Just out of curiosity.

 

yes. once the pan if off and you've cleaned or replaced the pickup tube and cleaned any/all sludge from the pan, you might as well put on a new pump.

also - you want to put a high volume pump on it. higher volume will create higher pressure and make up some for the worn clearances. get the melling high volume pump.

yes you can plasti-gage the bearings and replace them, but you need to be careful, take your time, and know what you're doing.

 

Ditto on replacing pump and pickup screen. Mine was doing same thing and it still has great pressure at 224,000 miles after replacing pump around 190,000. It was all sludged up from not doing regular oil changes.

 

Well fellas, yesterday I changed my oil pump. I went with a Melling HV and I'm still have the same problem with the low oil pressure. Where do I go from here? Not sure if my wallet can handle much more of this.

 

^^^ Rebuild it, re-bearing it (yes the cam bearings as well), find a good used motor and do a swap.

 

I went and talked a couple different mechanics the other day, one of which confirmed that it is in fact the cam bearing/cam that is causing all my problems. The other mechanic runs the service department at my local Dodge dealership, told me to do a compression test on each cylinder, to see if that's where I'm losing my pressure. That was an unexpected piece of advice, does that sound right to anyone else? Back to the first mechanic, said not much else I could do others than rebuild it or find another motor, but for now I could change the oil and go with thicker like 20w 50. So that's what I just got done doing and it kind of helped...its running 19-20 psi at running temp idling at will hang around 40 psi cruising down the highway @ 60mph. I know its not a fix, more like a band aid for something that needs fixed, but it really isn't possible for me to get a different motor and pay someone to do the swap, I admit that's a job I dont feel confident in doing myself and don't have the place to do it. But just wanted to tell everyone thanks for all their input in helping me out with this problem.