Low Oil Pressure - Just the Pump?

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

...but then that says more about the lack of corrosion resistance than the motors, I think!  Admittedly, my sample size of 1 is a bit small, but my Mother-in-Law's F150 looked like the Titanic on the underside after only four or five winters in Canton.

In reply to wae :

I have replaced engines in F-150s that no longer had laterals in the cab OR the bed.

Interestingly they were 4.2s that got the shortened #4 connecting rod mod after the owner ignored the coolant leak at the intake gasket long enough that the failed gasket filled the intake port with coolant.  (Always makes me laugh at, not with, people who blame GM plastic gasket failures on Dexcool.  The gasket was the problem, not the coolant)

The fact that people are willing to spend $5-6k on a truck that only has one or two years more life left in it says a lot about the used truck market, IMO.

I have replaced a couple 5.4s but they were in vans, and so long ago that I can't remember why.

Parts arrived today and I've got the fluids drained out and the radiator is removed.  Left side valve cover is out.  Right side valve cover is almost out...  the rear-most, lower-most bolt has an A/C line that lives right next to it, and it's been a real pain to un-do.  I'm not sure how lifting the engine would help, though.  The manual calls for the transmission to remain connected and just lift the front straight up, but there's only about an inch or so before the throttle body hits the cowl. 

I did grab a peek under the cover, though, and it might just be an optical illusion, but it looks like one of the rollers on #1 is in pretty grody shape.

Like Pete warns; spending time and money on a vehicle that is at, or near, the end of it's life span often ends up being a bad economic choice. I know, because I've made that mistake several times. But, like Pete says, the used vehicle market is red hot these days. Meanwhile, I'd proceed with caution.

To answer my question: it might be possible to get the right side valve cover off without lifting the engine, but I don't know how you'd do it.  When the valve cover finally released its hold on the head, this was left behind, just laying on the valve train:

It's the baffle for the PCV valve and other than the adhesive being missing, it doesn't appear to be damaged in any way.  I wonder if that was causing either the ticking noise or the gravelly noise.

The next thing I've run in to is that both cams have some pitting.  This is the right side:

The left side is somewhat similar.  I can see that the right has some rockers that have some scoring on the rollers - once I have the timing cover off and the crank in the service position I'll go ahead and pull the rockers out and look at them for sure.

I can get NOS Ford cams for about $150 each, and then I'd pick up 20 new rockers for about $10 each.  That's another $500 on top of the $500 I've already spent. 

Second option is to go to the yard tomorrow morning and find decent used cams and their matching rollers.

Third option is to just replace any rockers that are iffy and just run these. 

My internet searching has a pretty even split between "pitting like that will ruin the engine in five miles then kill your dog" and "I've run cams with that kind of pitting for five hundred thousand miles".

I'm pretty sure that's not what's causing the low oil pressure, but it seems like "while I'm in there" I should fix anything I can find.  But like Pete and FMB42 said, that's a trail fraught with wallet-draining peril...

In reply to wae :

Ugh, yeah, the cams are done.  There's no band-aiding that, the surface is coming apart.

As you point out, this will not affect oil pressure.

What CAN affect oil pressure, besides a leaky pickup tube (ahem), is wrecked cam journals.  You'll know it if you see it when you remove the cams.

All of the rollers were similarly damaged - nearly identical-looking pitting on them.

The font of the engine is off and I've got the cams out.  I opened up the oil pump and didn't see anything that jumped out at me as being all that awful.  The spring in the bypass valve wasn't broken and nothing particularly nasty fell out of it, but I didn't look real deeply at it yet.  The pickup tube was solidly bolted to the pump, but the o-ring was a little bit flat.  No tears or anything in it, though.  Some sludging was present around the timing tensioners and the guides had a few nicks here and there, but nothing broken.

The cam bores and balance shaft bores weren't brandy-new-looking, but they're not the worst I've ever seen, either.  I'm thinking that I replace the cams and the balance shaft, drop in a set of new rocker arms, and polish up the bores and caps.  Tell me if that's blazingly stupid.

I just realized that I didn't get any pictures of the cams.  But I wouldn't call them wrecked.  They didn't look brand new, but they didn't look all that awful, either.

I wouldn't "polish" anything - that just removes metal, and because it is aluminum, anything remotely abrasive that you use will get embedded and start eating your nice new camshafts.  In short, anything you can do to make it better will make it worse.  When I've seen the journals get wrecked, the cylinder head half also looks awful, yours don't look awful, so yeah you're good.

WHEN the pickup O-ring fails, it doesn't tear or anything.  It just looks a little bit flat

Cams, balance shaft, rocker arms and a new cupholder and battery hold-down have been acquired from the solitary V10 that seems to exist in the various yards in town!

New oil pump is installed and the left cam is in.  I didn't have my inch-pounds torque wrench at the shop for some reason, so the bolts are just slightly snugged for now.  To get the pickup tube bolts installed, I held the bolt with a curved-tip hemostat while I started it.  Once the threads caught, I put my flex-head 8mm ratcheting wrench on it and pushed up on the bolt head with the hemostat and just zipped it right in.  Probably took me a total of about 15 minutes.  So no need at all to drop the oil pan to replace the oil pump.  And no need to take the intake manifold off to get the cams out, either.

The FSM does completely ignore the fact that the balance shaft's bores/caps are part of the camshaft caps, though.  The holder and the balance shaft occupy the same space, so the shaft can't go on until the timing chain is attached, so I just put the balance shaft caps on empty and once the engine is all timed and anything, I'll pull them back off and get the balance shaft in.  They also sort of leave out the fact that you have to take the harmonic balancer off to get the timing chain off.

Oh, I forgot about this, but I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas:

The right side composite valve cover has this baffle on th underside for the PCV valve.  When I removed the valve cover, that baffle was just laying there in the valve train.  I don't know if it's been loose for a while or if the act of taking the valve cover off knocked it loose but it doesn't appear to have any damage.  It was attached at one time with some sort of adhesive.  Any suggestions as to what to use to re-attach it?  I didn't know if Right Stuff would have enough grip over time to hold it or if I should be going JB Weld or what.

In reply to wae :

High quality epoxy is the go to here. 

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Yep.  The stuff that comes in two syringe-like tubes, usually called something like 5 minute epoxy.

Well, crap.  All back together, same problem.

My mom & step dad's 5.4 had a low oil pressure issue. I couldn't help due to being across the country. Was so low the light was on. When the garage pulled the motor, the oil pickup was clogged with silicone worms & gunk. 

We're sorry to hear that wae. Hey, did I ever tell you about the 160+ K miles '95 GMC 4x4 mini Blazer that I wasted a couple of years of my life on not too many years ago? No? Ok, so front to rear; leaky oil cooler delete, air intake/throt body boot RR, head gasket job ( much working room on the DS side), electronic EGR valve RR, EGR head passage clearing (while heads were off), major tune, replaced OEM plastic bodied distributor with eB*y alloy unit (this was pretty tricky), DS power seat repair, in tank fuel pump/sending unit RR along w/ top of the tank Evap fittings, and finally RRing a couple of cheap rear gate plastic latch mechanism rod clips (removing the 20 yr old plastic interior panel was a pain). All for nothing due it developing a moderate rod knock just a couple of years later (@ ~ 170K miles).

In reply to FMB42 :

My friend who is a GM fanatic would say that's all perfectly normal. Whereas compared to my Honda of the same age got a clutch, brakes & a few other little things. 
He tried telling us at work that all manufacturers use the same parts & all are designed the same. 

Your comment reminds me of time (mid-'80s) when I told a Honda owner that his older car wouldn't last last much longer than the 60+K miles it had (IIRC) on the clock if he let it run ~ qt. low on eng. oil (I added ~ qt. before I ran the Em test, which it passed). He then, with a smile on his face, informed me that it had 260K, yes 260K, miles on it (the clocks back then only indicated 99,999.9 miles before they rolled over to 00,000.0 miles).

Looks like it's time for 10W40 and keep chuggin'.

Remember the S40 that I used to have?  After a rallycross run, the low oil pressure light would come on.  Volvo said in the owner's manual that it was normal for the low oil pressure light to come on "after hard driving" and to just hold the idle up until the engine cooled off.  I switched to 5W40 and it never did that again.

Sounds like a combo of gracefully aging engine and an oil pump designed for 5/6ths as many bearings to feed. 

At least your valvetrain is no longer a time bomb.  Those lobes looked rough!

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I should have the engine lifted up and the oil pan out in another hour or so and I'll be able to get the pickup tube out and look at it.  It didn't look very clogged and I didn't see any obvious cracks or holes when I stuck my camera down it.

After seeing those lobes, I'm concerned what the main and rod bearings look like.  The UOA report didn't seem to have anything that really screamed that the engine was coming apart, but I can always try some +.001 bearings to see if that closes things up, I guess.

In reply to wae :

I wouldn't be worried TOO much about the main/rod bearings due to the cam/rollers.  That is not uncommon thing to happen, have replaced cam/lifters and everything was just fine afterwards.  Sometimes with a roller cam, even OHC, the lobes just start pitting and spalling, and it eats the followers.  Or the rollers on the followers start to fail and the lobes pit and spall. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I will say that even though it did its stupid oil pressure dance, that motor has never sounded so good and idled so smooth.

The valve train wouldn't worry so much except that it isn't building proper pressure!

I have zero idea if this is even a thing with Mod motors, but...

on many motors, the way they drill oil passages obviously makes hole where it shouldn't.  Those holes are then plugged with NPT plugs or freeze plugs.  Possible that one of those is leaking internally?

wae said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I should have the engine lifted up and the oil pan out in another hour or so and I'll be able to get the pickup tube out and look at it.  It didn't look very clogged and I didn't see any obvious cracks or holes when I stuck my camera down it.

After seeing those lobes, I'm concerned what the main and rod bearings look like.  The UOA report didn't seem to have anything that really screamed that the engine was coming apart, but I can always try some +.001 bearings to see if that closes things up, I guess.

I wouldn't worry about bearings.  Modern oil pumps make so much volume and modern metallurgy keeps things kosher for much longer these days that you could have some pretty intense wear in the bearings and not experience pressure drops.

Putting new bearings on a worn crank is kind of like putting new rings in a worn bore.  You're putting something perfectly round on a journal that isn't perfectly round anymore.  It can make things worse.

After an epic fight - and I've gotta be honest, I have no idea how I'm going to put all this bcak together - I was able to remove the oil pickup tube.  Could that be enough sludge and crap in there to cause oil pressure problems?