Low oil pressure after Valve job? Noise?

[LVpine]

I just had my heads reconditioned and my head gaskets replaced by a local european car mechanic. There is a new and very pronounced noise coming from the engine. I had a ticking before, but this is like a deeper, double ticking. It almost sounds like a chugging. and I don't think it speeds up or slows down with my RPMs. (may be wrong about that). Also, my oil light in the dash is flashing on and off. Anyway, I brought it back to the mechanic about an hour after I picked it up from him. He tells me the noise is caused by low engine pressure and that my oil pump is likely bad. He says he can replace the pump for $450 labor plus the cost of the part (which I'll find myself if need be) I thought I'd see what you guys said first.

Thanks,
Lvpine

 

[gahill2]

I just got mine back from having the heads replaced yesterday.

I have not had any of the problems that you mentioned. Hopefully you will not have to fork out the additional cash.

Just my two cents

 

[cbass]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...

but don't you have to rebuild LR oil pumps? I didn't think you could just replace them, like plug and play.

That seems like quite a bit 'o money too. I would get a oil pressure test first to double check. If the oil pressure is low, you will be better informed that it's the oil pump that's having the problems.

 

[davidz]

yea you can rebuild a 4.0 oil pump, heres the catch,
the aluminum timing cover is the casing for the gears. those covers can become scored and cause the gears to sit to low in the case resulting in a low oil pressure scenario, the oil pump gears rely on very close tolerances in that cover to preform correctly. so you could go through alot of trouble to replace the gears in a worn out cover only to have the same issue as before. They are probably replacing the cover and gears and thats the reason for the high $ amount on parts.
I would go right to the oil pan, remove it, then remove the sludge and other crap that has collected in the oil pump pick up tube screen resulting in a drop in oil pressure do to starvation. this is probably a result of them disturbing the sludge on the top side.

 

[LVpine]

The dealer is going to charge me $100 to check my oil pressure and he suggests that I just have him replace the pump. The problem is that it seems he's only going by that noise to decide that the pump is bad. I also forgot to mention this is a disco 1. Does anybody know if low oil pressure would cause such a noise? also, what problems will be caused if I do have low oil pressure and don't fix it immediately?

 

[davidz]

yes lack of oil pressure will cause lots of unusual noises. If you operate any motor with poor oil pressure catastrophic damage can occur.

 

[Sirfoss]

Dont go back

I would have a problem returnig a vehicle to a customer with the issues you have stated and not only the I probably wouldnt be having my doors open for long. Do not drive this Land Rover you can trash it very fast with low oil pressure. Contact me for more info if you like.
Mike

 

[jcollett]

do the oil pan and pickup cleaning like david said. i had a flikering oil light and some ticking on my D1. pulled the pan cleaned it all up, pulled the pickup tube and cleaned it out too (pretty sludged up). after all was said and done, no more ticking (except slightly @ startup) and no more oil light. see the post "tic tic tic" for more details on this. i think that i would do this before spending huge $$.... it can't hurt, all it can do is help the problem.

good luck man.

 

[LVpine]

Thanks guys. I'll be driving it 3 miles from my office to my house today but thats it. I'll get in there and try to do the oil pan pickup thing tonight. Then on monday I'm taking it to a different mechanic to take a look.
Thanks again

LVpine

 

[cbass]

You also might want to check that the rockers are all OK. On our disco, I just got done doing the job of replacing the rocker, cleaning the oil pan and pickup screen and cleaning out the engine as much as possible. We had a pretty bad ticking, and now it is all cleared up. Here's my other thread that talks about it. Peter posted the first post with pics for me.
http://discoweb.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1784&highlight=rockers Take a look at that and read through it, I have some pics of after the job near the bottom. All in all, I think it cost a little over $100 for the rockers, Marvel Mystery oil, and new oil/filters. The rocker might be something to check too.

 

[Steve83]

If the noise wasn't there before, then it's the mechanic's responsibility. I left a rag in an engine once, and it HURT to replace the short block, but that was the only way to make it right.