The other day I was hauling some stuff back from Bastrop and started getting a binging alarm, a serious issue. The console had a low oil pressure alarm, but the gauge wasn't bottomed and it wasn't getting hot, so it still had some oil. I got home as gently and directly as I could, keeping the RPm low and a limitless research showed the likely culprit was the o-ring on the oil uptake tube that draws oil from the pan sump up to the pump. If it splits or gets loose, the pump can suck in a bit of air Causing inadequate oil pressure.
Ordered a new pan seal and o ring and studied up on the pan, which is fairly easy to drop in a 2004 2wd suburban. The problem is it's the first time it's been done in 17 years and almost 400,000 miles. It took me a good hour or more just to clean the pan and the area around it from greasy and oily dirt and sand that had built up over the years. I probably should have washed it at a car wash with degreaser a couple of days before.
Dropping the pan was easy enough, but what I found in it was the nastiest sludge I have personally seen in an engine. That took 2 more hours to scrape, scrub, dissolve and clean out of the pan, the oil tube, and off the bottom of the block itself. What a mess. Once it was clean enough, getting it back together was fairly easy, but I was stunned that that 5.3 was still running so well with that much thick black goop in the oil sump where the pump pick up tube end sits, and how cruddy the screen on the intake was.
I used a good quart of mineral spirits getting that crap. Cleaned up.
Ordered a new pan seal and o ring and studied up on the pan, which is fairly easy to drop in a 2004 2wd suburban. The problem is it's the first time it's been done in 17 years and almost 400,000 miles. It took me a good hour or more just to clean the pan and the area around it from greasy and oily dirt and sand that had built up over the years. I probably should have washed it at a car wash with degreaser a couple of days before.
Dropping the pan was easy enough, but what I found in it was the nastiest sludge I have personally seen in an engine. That took 2 more hours to scrape, scrub, dissolve and clean out of the pan, the oil tube, and off the bottom of the block itself. What a mess. Once it was clean enough, getting it back together was fairly easy, but I was stunned that that 5.3 was still running so well with that much thick black goop in the oil sump where the pump pick up tube end sits, and how cruddy the screen on the intake was.
I used a good quart of mineral spirits getting that crap. Cleaned up.
