Hey all -

I need a little assistance on what to do here. Last week was a horrible week in that on Tuesday, my Nissan Frontier self destructed causing $650 in damage. Drove my dads Ranger on Wednesday and almost home oil pressure bottomed out. Dad met me, decided to try to drive it home and now it's locked up. He has since bought a new truck (09 F150 XLT STX) and is looking to sell the Ranger.

On to why I'm here now....

The Ranger has been a great truck and while it's not perfect, it's still a good little truck. I'm kinda interested in seeing if I could maybe pour a little ATF down in the cylinders and let it sit for a few days and try to free it up. If so, I may be interested in trying to fix it.

My questions on this are:

1. Has anyone tried freeing up a locked engine this new? ATF or MMO in the cylinders, let it soak a few days and try to manually bump it back and forth with a breaker on the crank pulley to free it up.

2. With these engines (3.0L), is there a common point of failure (Oil Pump, Sending Unit, distributor gear, etc) that causes this no oiling situation?

3. With tearing down the engine being out of the question (not going to devote that much time and money to it since it would now be an extra vehicle), where is the best place to look to determine the cause of the problem?

4. Am I correct that one can replace the oil pump by dropping the pan and jacking up the motor? Sending Unit? I'd imagine pretty much anything else could be changed from up top.

This is not a necessary thing to do, but I've never done it and kinda wouldn't mind trying my hand at it to see if I can resurrect the faithful little pickup.

Any thoughts and insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

Your best bet would be to swap in another 3.0L motor. Once it stops running because of low or no oil pressure probably means the crank bearings, cylinders, rings and pistons are scored requiring a rebuild on top of replacing a bad oil pump.