Hey all i am new to this forum and and just beating my head against the wall trying to not swap motors on this truck. 😠 i have a 2nd gen with a 360 in it guy brought it into the shop to fix some oil leaks and tranny leaks and when he got the truck back within a mile of the shop he lost oil pressure so he went back they changed the oil pressure sensor he went back to get it and it happened again so they decided to just change the sensor again. This time he made it to the freeway and while driving 70 mph 2 miles from the exit the oil pressure dropped yet again but instead of pulling over right away he kept going to get off the freeway and now it has a tick in the top end. The shop told him they want nothing more to do with it and will not work on it anymore. Now i have it. He wants me to just swap the motor but i honestly dont think the engine is bad she runs out good and i cant get the oil pressure to drop while i have had it.

I changed the oil pump because oil pressure out of the end of push rods looked weak. I put a engine flush through engine and let idle longer then recomended cause oil looked like diesel oil. I changed the oil with the flush then added new oil and then i ran another flush through it before i dropped the oil to do oil pump and oil was just as black as the first time.

I changed the spark plugs because when i pulled them because of missfire code 2 of the plugs where shattered on the inside and actually surprised the truck ran at all with how bad plugs where. But the noise got cut in half by doing that alone.

I used stethoscope and i can distinctly tell the noise is coming from the top end. Could a lifter collapse and not come back to life with loss of oil pressure? I own 3 dodges with the 360 in a 2nd gen and i have never had this problem with any of mine and have lost pressure on my 2001 offroad but i stopped right away and had towed. I am looking for advice or what i should do next i have been fighting the fact that i cant condem this motor because she does run out very well even with the ticking from top end.

 

Do you mean shattered, like the porcelain was missing off the plug?

 

Yes the porcelain was completely gone on one plug and half gone on another. I am thinking the spark jumping was half the noise.

 

Might want to check the exhaust manifolds to determine if the gasket(s) are leaking.

The lifters are hydraulic rollers and its possible that one or more may be the source of your ticking.

 

I've never dealt with this before, but probably need to see if the pieces are still in the cylinder. I would imagine they would be making a racket (and hopefully not further damage) if they were still in there. The whole timing of when the noise started as you had oil pressure issues doesn't really make sense unless the plug(s) broke at the same time. I've heard that plug failure like that is because of overheating the cylinder for some reason.


Blown head gasket?