Deer strike catches up with me? Plenty O Questions!

[WarWagon]

Freeze plug or stuck relief valve in oil pump? Valve train you would think would have a miss if something was causing low oil pressure. Something non wearing that is dropping oil pressure.

Verified with mechanical gauge? I have seen good engines removed over a bad gauge reading.

 

[jmiller]

After the accident, I knew some bearing was lost, because of the drop in hot oil pressure. Time, weather, and recovery from the busted leg prevented me from doing the inspection right then.

Once the sound and associated additional oil pressure dropped again, it set off the alarm bells. But I'm not convinced that the sound and pressure drop are necessarily related, yet. But doing the inspection and knowing for sure what the current rod clearances was a peace of mind decision.

No, the pressure had not been double checked with a mechanical gauge. The OPS might be going bad, adding a mechanical gauge is probably going to happen.

I will inspect the rest of the rod oil clearances. I'm on the fence about checking the mains if the rods are all in spec.

The cold oil pressure has always been astronomical +80 psi, at least 75 psi after the deer. Now since the latest event, its in the 60's.

I've wondered if the pressure relief valve worked properly or not. It will get an inspection too.



Right now, I plan to pull the injectors and have them tested.


Plenty of information, but its created plenty more questions!

 

[Husker6.5]

Based off of what I remember from the AOAP program back in the day when I was a Maintenance Officer, the Iron and Chromium numbers show slightly higher than normal wear of the rings/cylinder walls and this is backed up by the silicon, sodium and potassium number sin the contaminate metals column - those are a result of fine dust getting past your air filter - if you have a really good filter on it, like 6-8 layer oiled gauze or a really good dry media or paper filter, those numbers should all be in the 0-3 ppm range. Silicon at 9, especially this soon after an oil change, tells me that you either 1) operate in a lot of dusty conditions or 2) have an air filter that flows really good but doesn't capture <2 micron sized particles very well. Just my humble opinion.

As far as your noise vs. oil pressure issue, yes, confirm the dash gauge reading with a good, calibrated mechanical gauge and keep trying to hunt down that phantom noise.

Oh, and next time, give those deer what they want BEFORE they strike!