there is a slight tick in my engine when you listen to it on the drivers side. also when sitting at idle my oil pressure guage is way down there right next to the red line, and when you give it gas it goes up a little, and every once in a while after the engine is good and warm the oil pressure guage will just go way down and my acceleration will like go away totally. takes forever just to get it up to 30, and then when i stop and go again it will go away and do fine. anybody have any ideas????

 

Stock gauges are known to be inaccurate.

A good rule of thumb is 10psi for every 1k rpms.

Does the ticking increase as you give it gas? I'd check for exhaust leaks first.

Or could even be injectors, forgot to check your sig.

 

the tick doesnt increase when you give it gas, it pretty much stays the same, and i have an lg4 with an edelbrock carb. and when you give it gas and its at about 2k rpm it doest even move very much, just a little bit, but yet when its cold and you start it it is pretty high and doesnt move much when revved

 

next thing you will want to do is hook up a mechanical oil pressure gauge, and determine from there what your oil pressure is doing.

look around the engine bay, do you see oil leaking anywhere?

 

yeah, there is a slight leak around my valve covers, i tried tightening them down adn it didnt work. then there also seems to be a leak on the passenger side under a round thing where a bundle of wires connects into a tube or something, cant really see it, all i can feel is a little oil on it. there is a small drip under my car, dont know if its from the valve covers or what

 

that was post #1,000,000 .. maybe you'll win a grand prize

 

yeah hook up a mechanical guage, and try to fix the leaks.. how much oil are you losing?

when fully warm and at idle the oil pressure should be low but not realy low.. the oil pressure should increase with rpms..

 

im not losing oil very fast at all, very slow, like half a quart in 3 to 4 weeks, i think its in my valve covers, the gaskets r probably bad and i might have a bad rear main seal. not too worried, im just tryin to keep it running till next winter when i drop in the 350! when fully warm and idle the pressure is reight next to the red line, when revved it goes up a little, but not a whole lot, unless ur cruisin about 60 then it will go up quite a bit. but also today i shut it off, 3 seconds later started it again and it almost wouldnt start, like the timing is off, and i just had that adjusted. could all this be cause by bad cam bearings??

 

I wouldn't fool around with a mechanical gauge.... you have to do about 5 times as much work to hook it up as you would have to do just to replace the sending unit, which goes bad quite often. Most likely you'd do all that fooling around and just discover that the sender is bad. Just change the sending unit and be done with it.

Cam bearings will not cause a hard start condition.

Leave your timing alone. It seems to be real popular to blame everything that goes wrong on either timing, or EGR, or a "stuck" or "collapsed" lifter. If anyone tells you any of these things, ignore them.

Your starter problem is probably either a weak battery, bad battery cables, or a worn-out starter. The starters on these cars are absolutely pitiful, even in top condition they can barely turn the motor over. If it's bad, consider a "mini-starter" instead of the cheeeepest thing that fits.

Definitely fix your oil leaks.

The tick is probably a bent push rod or a worn-out rocker arm.

 

check your headers.. loose headers tick.. could be a valve that needs to be adjusted or a clogged pushrod of bent lifter.. if it isnt the headers pull the valve covers since ya need gaskets ne way ... clogged lifters are pretty easy to determine.. look for the rocker that looks dry... if thats the case just take it out n clean the blockage out with a pipe cleaner or something.. if its a valve just adjust it... good luck

 

95% of my "ticks" are exhaust leaks. there are so many places for exhaust to leak it isnt even funny... and it always sounds like somthing different "what now? a collapsed lifter? no that was last weeks tick... this one sounds like a spark jumping to ground..."

a leak right at the headers will sound like an evil lifter tick. very noticable.
a leak at the collector will sound like a "quiet" lifter tick, but when you rev the engine a little and the backpressure gets going its very notable too. and there are other, more unobvious locations as well...