In reply to Stampie (FS) :
It's possible that the o-ring that came with the pump was bad out of the box and the Motorcraft one that came attached to the new pickup tube fixed it. But I think the most likely culprit was the crud that was jammed in the strainer bell.
It may just be all in my head, but it does seem like it has a little more power than before. And it's definitely quieter.
Having crud in my bell always makes my pressure low, so I kind of get that.
Nothing better than a happy tech ending. Good work wae.
What do I win for guessing correctly?
A piece of cheese? I'll take it.
Good to hear it's working. Either that pickup was the problem, or it was something minor that got accidentally corrected in the disassembly / reassembly process.
The only problem that I found through that whole adventure that would affect oil flow was the clogged up strainer. I took the original pump and pressure relief valve apart looking for problems and didn't find anything that looked hinkey. The tensioners looked like they were at the end of their travel, but didn't appear to be leaking. There was a tiny bit of sludge built up where the oil port in the block doesn't match up quite right with the oil port on the tensioner body (which appears to be by design), but the engine wasn't "sludged up". I very carefully inspected both of the o-rings - the original and the one that Melling shipped with the new pump - and neither one had any signs of being pinched or cracked. Both the original and the Melling one were a little bit flatter than the new Motorcraft one, but I wouldn't call them squished.
I don't really know where the goop on the strainer came from since there really wasn't much in the engine or the pan that I could find. Given the relatively low miles - it averaged about 5.5k miles/year until i bought it - I'm guessing that oil changes might have been somewhat infrequent which lead to the pitting and the sludge.
It's a heck of a relief to have that taken care of and even though the pump itself wasn't at fault, getting the new timing chain on and swapping out the cams, rockers, and balance shaft were things that probably needed to be done anyway - I just didn't know about it. That PCV baffle was going to fall off soon as well, if I had to guess. Having the throttle body off gave me a chance to clean it out real well and I've got a new serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner in place. I thought I had a rear main leak, but when I took the inspection plate off, there was no oil in the bellhousing and the oil pan gasket was a bit fragile in places, so I may have taken care of a small oil leak while I was at it. It never marked its territory, but it was doing a little auto-rust prevention.
For now, I'm going to go ahead and swap out the oil again in about 500ish miles then run the oil for about 3k and send it in for another UOA to compare.
wae said:It's a heck of a relief to have that taken care of and even though the pump itself wasn't at fault, getting the new timing chain on and swapping out the cams, rockers, and balance shaft were things that probably needed to be done anyway - I just didn't know about it. That PCV baffle was going to fall off soon as well, if I had to guess. Having the throttle body off gave me a chance to clean it out real well and I've got a new serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner in place. I thought I had a rear main leak, but when I took the inspection plate off, there was no oil in the bellhousing and the oil pan gasket was a bit fragile in places, so I may have taken care of a small oil leak while I was at it. It never marked its territory, but it was doing a little auto-rust prevention.
I think that fits right in with my theory that at any point in time, all cars are broken, it's just a matter of whether it's become obvious yet.
Glad it's fixed, and the engine didn't have to come out.
rslifkin said:wae said:It's a heck of a relief to have that taken care of and even though the pump itself wasn't at fault, getting the new timing chain on and swapping out the cams, rockers, and balance shaft were things that probably needed to be done anyway - I just didn't know about it. That PCV baffle was going to fall off soon as well, if I had to guess. Having the throttle body off gave me a chance to clean it out real well and I've got a new serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner in place. I thought I had a rear main leak, but when I took the inspection plate off, there was no oil in the bellhousing and the oil pan gasket was a bit fragile in places, so I may have taken care of a small oil leak while I was at it. It never marked its territory, but it was doing a little auto-rust prevention.
I think that fits right in with my theory that at any point in time, all cars are broken, it's just a matter of whether it's become obvious yet.
That's so meta.
Good name for a repair shop: Schrodinger's repair. Was it broken or not? Who knows? But it's fixed now.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:rslifkin said:wae said:It's a heck of a relief to have that taken care of and even though the pump itself wasn't at fault, getting the new timing chain on and swapping out the cams, rockers, and balance shaft were things that probably needed to be done anyway - I just didn't know about it. That PCV baffle was going to fall off soon as well, if I had to guess. Having the throttle body off gave me a chance to clean it out real well and I've got a new serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner in place. I thought I had a rear main leak, but when I took the inspection plate off, there was no oil in the bellhousing and the oil pan gasket was a bit fragile in places, so I may have taken care of a small oil leak while I was at it. It never marked its territory, but it was doing a little auto-rust prevention.
I think that fits right in with my theory that at any point in time, all cars are broken, it's just a matter of whether it's become obvious yet.
That's so meta.
Good name for a repair shop: Schrodinger's repair. Was it broken or not? Who knows? But it's fixed now.
Or maybe it's not
wae said:Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:rslifkin said:wae said:It's a heck of a relief to have that taken care of and even though the pump itself wasn't at fault, getting the new timing chain on and swapping out the cams, rockers, and balance shaft were things that probably needed to be done anyway - I just didn't know about it. That PCV baffle was going to fall off soon as well, if I had to guess. Having the throttle body off gave me a chance to clean it out real well and I've got a new serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner in place. I thought I had a rear main leak, but when I took the inspection plate off, there was no oil in the bellhousing and the oil pan gasket was a bit fragile in places, so I may have taken care of a small oil leak while I was at it. It never marked its territory, but it was doing a little auto-rust prevention.
I think that fits right in with my theory that at any point in time, all cars are broken, it's just a matter of whether it's become obvious yet.
That's so meta.
Good name for a repair shop: Schrodinger's repair. Was it broken or not? Who knows? But it's fixed now.
Or maybe it's not
Every repair comes with a free box of radioactive cat
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