the beater is in trouble

[Strugglebucket]

it was(still is) a dark and stormy night.

i was coming home from work in my POS '88 dx that i've been driving while i work on my lx-i. POS it may be, but this car has been good to me. it's enabled me to get a lot of work done on the lx-i, -i nicknamed her "the enabler".

purchased for $50 last summer, i've gotten nearly 15,000 miles out of it after replacing the rad, stat, and dizzy. the car and i have both been fortunate to have found each other, but tonight as we effect our egress across the rain-sodden tarmac it seems our luck is about to change.

here i am driving down a road i have been down many times before. everything is fine until, suddenly... a red glow eminates from my gauge cluster. i look down. it is the one that looks like a magic lamp. but it doesn't mean a genie will pop out of my dash and will grant me three wishes, it means I AM LOSING MY OIL PRESSURE!

so i stop at the first gas station i come to, thinking i'm low on oil.
nope! the oil is full.

i sit back down inside the now disabled enabler.
as i listen to the rain drumming across the windshield i consider my options:

option #1) i can try to phone my roomate and ask if he can bring his truck to tow my car home. he may not be home. he may not be sober.

option #2) i can walk the five miles home in the rain and come back for the car later.

option #3) i can attempt to drive the car home.

being the daredevil and strong advocate of fate testing that i am, i choose option #3. holding my breath, i begin what i grimly realize may be the last trip home the enabler ever makes.

i baby it like i have never babied anything before. i do not rev past 2k. i coast through stop signs. i get every stoplight green by sheer force of will alone.

funny side note: did you know that when your oil pressure starts dropping there are two stages to the idiot light? first it just lights up dim red. then, when the pressure gets really low, it starts flashing bright red, soft red. bright red, soft red. neato, huh?

anyway, i made it home. i don't know how i did it. i mean i don't know how she did it.
magic maybe?
love?
aliens?

all i know is when i shut the engine off safe in the sanctuary of my driveway, i thanked her and patted her on the dash promising never to put her through such an ordeal again.






now i just gotta figure out what's wrong.

...and how i'm getting to work tomorrow.

[BlueBead]

Oil pump man.....
Good luck with that.. It'll probs be more than you paid for the beater

[snow_man_20]

mabie you can get a good 15,000 more miles with a new oil pump. It's car payments or repair payments. Sucks though, hope you didn't blow the head, i bet you were watching the temp gage more then the road. Good luck dude

[Strugglebucket]

the thing is, i don't know for sure if it is the oil pump. it could be the pickup. there's a fat dent in the oil pan, but that's been there since i've had the car.

[88' Accord Ltd]

ur lucky man! I know the feeling, my beater is cashed too as of yesterday. Was late to get to work!

[Vanilla Sky]

i bought a car for $25 that had a bad oil pump... i was hoping it was a "dumb" fix, but it wasn't, so i'm parting it...

look at it this way, for maybe $200, you've had a car that got you 15,000 miles... buy a new car and see how much that costs...

[accordlxi2.0]

knowing it would've been a ford...
but lets all hope for your sake that it was the pick-up.
i mean if it was the pump would'nt the engine start sounding funny??

oh yea that light thing that is neat...when i had my 86 was low on oil...i made a sharp turn real fast and the light was flashing and beeping.....gotta love honda.

[AccordEpicenter]

i can also be the oil pressure relief valve in the oil filter housing, they can get stuck/clogged.

[thegreatdane]

I just had the same problem thursday last week with my daily driver..
While replacing the alternator in the shop I had to fire it up, and then it suddenly lost oil pressure. Had a pressure gauge on it and there was close to no oil pressure. Hoping it was the oil pump I took the timing belt and oil pump off, but sadly the oil pump was fine. I hoped that it could be the pickup instead and took off the oil pan, but no the pickup was fine although lots of metal was caught in the filter, so I figured that the rod bearings was probably done with and took the bearing caps off only to realize that they looked really good which was a bad thing since this meant that it would most likely be the mainbearings instead. And all 5 main bearings was fried to say the least. A lot of material had been torn of the bearings.
I tore apart one of my other engines so I could use the crank and bearings from that and when I had it all apart I got a nice little surprise. Four of the five main bearings looked really good but then there was the fifth one which was fried...
Thats when I decided to give up on the engine. The weird thing was that the spare engine I took apart suposedly shouldnt have done more than 50.000miles. A bit early to destroy a main bearing I would say.
I hope your main bearings havent gone bad too. It's a pain in the ass to diagnose since you'll have to go through all of the other stuff first.