Oil pump drive broke or fell off.....

Well, today I crawled underneath the car while it was running to see where the oil leak was coming from and all of a sudden I start hearing tapping/rattling from something inside the timing cover area.

I said "dammit" and started tearing everything apart. Only to find later on that the hex oil pump drive either broke or fell off. I would say it just came loose because I still had good oil pressure (guage was between NORM and High).

Has anybody ever had this happen or heard of it. I think I vaguely remember seeing a set screw that held in that hex drive, but I dunno. I couldn't take the front timing cover off because I didn't have a balancer puller at the time so I'm not sure if it broke off or just came loose.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciate.

Thanks

I cut my oil filter open and I found some bearing material. No chunks just really fine miniscule material.

The gauge was reading the pressure was good, but I found that the sending unit wire connectors was rubbing up against the accessory bracket. Won't this ground out and keep the gauge reading pressure even if there isn't any?

I just went thru this my hex shaft striped rounded off had oil pressure at idle and 20 lbs at 2000 rpms and 5 at 4000 rpms more force on it more it sliped.

i now have a new shaft and problem is gone also make sure you use a good timing cover gasket mine leaked it was a felpro oil sprayed out from cover to block mating used mc cord and its gone .

mannysc said:

I just went thru this my hex shaft striped rounded off had oil pressure at idle and 20 lbs at 2000 rpms and 5 at 4000 rpms more force on it more it sliped.

i now have a new shaft and problem is gone also make sure you use a good timing cover gasket mine leaked it was a felpro oil sprayed out from cover to block mating used mc cord and its gone .

Click to expand...

Did you ever find out why it stripped out?

yes oil bypass valve stuck closed and it could not release the extra pressure
so it striped

Well I took everything apart and found that the C-clip was bad on the shaft. I have a couple of them laying around so I just swapped out to another C-clip and all was good.

I then found that the oil sending unit wire was grounding out against the accessory bracket, so I fixed that, started it, and showed no oil pressure with check gauge light. The sending unit is brand new, too.

I hooked up a mechanical gauge and it reads 63psi, so it's all good.

Do you have an aftermarket oil pres. sender and/or gauge? Im not sure, but if you are talking about the stock oil pressure gauge, unless you have modified it to actually work, its not sending an actual reading. If im not mistaking the way it works is, if you get ANY type of signal you the gauge will read anywhere in the NORM band, which means nothing and thats why it fluctuates. So unless you did the mod. to make it fully functional i wouldnt base my self on what it tells you. At least you used a mech. gauge to check stuff.