Thread: My Baby let me down

Coming home last Wednesday night, shifted down at a corner and coming out heard a "Click" and oil light came on...checked this site and others and had a punt that the switch had packed it in. Went to work the next morning and said to the missus to keep a very wary ear for any noises. She made it about 200m up the road when the baby started making distressed noises and running out of power..not good. Shut down and got the kids to push home..luckily all down hill. I got home and unscrewed the sender switch to confirm no pressure...shoulda done it the night before. Dropped the sump to check on the relief valve on the oil pump..another site for problems if stuck open. Opened it up and found two large bits of bearing metal about the size of the outer ring of the oil pump??? Not hit by anything solid, just warn and old by the look of the oil marks. In the sump was bits of bearing material but may have been there from a previous rebuild before I got her. Sump was glued on with enough silastic to do a sump on a 12litre AND gearbox AND diff housing seals.

Any ideas where to start? I have located a 300TDi wrecker engine for $1300 so that is the first thing to do. Swap out this engine for the dud one and fix the dud engine in my spare time. Hopefully, just replace the oil pump and see how it goes. I am betting the bigends have picked up on the crank so that would mean a regrind...time will tell as to the dollars but need a start point to find out why the oil pressure failed so instantly.

If you have bearing material (big end or Mains) in the oil pump then I imagine there would no filter screen on the pick-up.
If the bearing material is from big ends or mains then you have probably destroyed the crank, drop the rod caps and check crank and bearing shells and do same for Mains. Remove oil pump and see if it is seized up, let us know what you find, Regards Frank.