I have a 87 iroc with a 305TPI and lately ive noticed that when the vehicle gets to operating temperature the oil pressure drops to almost 0, (when its first started its at its usual oil pressure tho)
It also seems to make a ticking noise at operating temperature, so im not sure if it's just a lifter or if i've spun a bearing? Ive checked my oil and there's no shavings in the oil. Thanks for any help guys.

 

Usually if the bearing has spun it will progressively get louder. At least on my last engine it did.

I know the oil preasure senders can go bad and the gauge clusters themselves can go bad and show false readings. Maybe someone else has some better ideas.

 

oil pressure on zero ought to tell you to stop and figure it out. i'd start with replacing the sender or putting a mechanical gauge on it.

 

i replaced the oil pressure sending unit, so maybe it is the gauge..
and the oil pressure never goes right on 0, its just low, like in the red

 

this happened to me. The oil pressure would drop to the red and the car would idle really rough then shut off. I had to replace all my bearings while the engine was still in the car. (NOT FUN) I think it happened because the bearings lost clearance and it won't build pressure when its hot.

 

My 89 GTA started acting like that after about 100K. The whole engine simply needed to be rebuilt. Everything had enough wear that the engine was just plain tired. The oil pressure would drop when warm at idle, I would get very slight blow-by at my dipstick (wet at the dipstick tube but never enough to drip on the manifolds) and the car would not feel as strong warm as it did cold. It never burned any oil and ran like a top.

 

thats exactly like my car, is it possible to keep driving it for a while or is it going to get progressively worse?
thanks

 

It depends how hard you push it. It will get worse, but there is no way of safely knowing how soon that will come. Plan for the rebuild

 

yeah it all depends on how hard you drive it. This happened to me 3 weeks after a fresh rebuild. It just came out of nowhere. My engine is already at half of its life span and all I hear is clicking at high load. But that doesn't stop me from running a 15.3 1/4 mile from an LO3.