Driving home last night, 1/2 block from home the oil light came on and stayed.
I hooked up a mechanical pressure guage to the oil pressure port and started the engine again. Yikes it was rattling from deep within and no pressure registered on the guage at all
So tommorrow i am going to pull the oil pan....but what am i looking for !!
Where is the drive for the pump in my 223

 

This might be far feched and it sounds like bad news. But look at the oil real closely. Is it real thin? Does it smell like gas? I had a problem like this once it turned out that the fuel pump went bad and leeked gas into the crankcase and thined out the oil to the point that it made the oil pump loose prime.

 

An engine of mine fried once when the line to the mechanical oil pressure gauge came off. Oil leaked out. Engine fried. Check the line at the gauge and where it goes into the engine. check the seals around both spots. visually inspect head gaskets for leaks/oil blow-by. check gasket on oil pan, and everywhere else for that matter. check breather valve on top of valve cover for blow by.

the sound you said you heard is of obvious concern. so, if a visual inspection of all gaskets and the line to/from the mechanical oil pressure gauge uncovers nothing, I'm wondering if something on the lower end of the motor just plain ol' broke? threw a rod? cracked a crankcase in the cold weather? bearing? seal? That'd cause the motor to "clunk" and cease up and your oil pressure gauge would register "0". Just another possibility I thought I'd throw at you if you start to scratch your head on the oil pressure gauge thing.

Daryl

 

This pump is from a 1959 223. I hope it helps.

 

I am going to tell you the obvious, but don't start your engine again until you check out the oil pump!

 

Here is the up date......
broken drive from the distributor to the oil pump, thus the sudden loss of pressure.
The hex drive shaft sheared right at a roll pin hole. The role pin holds the hex shaft in the distributor shaft.
So i pulled the pan thinking something must have jammed the oil pump to shear the shaft. The pump is clean and spins real easy !?
With the pan off i can see the cam lobes and they look okay.
What's next ?
Well i'm looking for a gasket set now to reassemble the oil pump and I need a new hex drive and the distributor gear had some cracks in 2 teeth so i'm looking for a dist. gear too. When i get all the parts I will reassemble the engine and fire it up again.
A rebuilt 223 is NOT what i wanted for Christmas !!!
There was some metal in the pan....I will post pictures of the pieces. It appears to be a large thin steel washer. It was in several pieces and looks like it went thru some moving pieces but i don't think this was the problem. They could have been there awhile.
Once i run the engine i will do several oil and filter changes to flush the metal that would have been made with no oil pressure

 

Shaune, sorry to hear about your engine troubles! I still have my distributor if there are some parts you need that you can't find nearer to home. e-mail me.

Hope you got the valve cover o.k.

Kevin

 

shaune, while you have the pan off take a main bearing cap down and check the color of the main bearing, or take a rod cap off, and check that color, if your not familar with the discoloration of bearings vs/wear a lot of books have pictures. This will tell you alot. I hope you have access to a torque wrench to retorgue what you remove for inspection.

 

I had this happen to mine and I rebuilt it. Hopefully it is just the bearings on yours.

Sorry this is so late but I searched for 1959.


Huey

 

It sounds very similar to what happened with my friend. In the oil pump, there is a drive gear. For whatever reason, that gear split, or broken in two on my friends engine. The noises your hearing are the broken pieces grinding together when you start it. It sounds like the pump because the oil pressure dropped real quick and with no oil leaking out anywhere it kind of refers to the pump. If it was a bearing etc. You'd definitely know it by the sound (rod knock) and usually still have some pressure even if it's low. Good luck.

 

Mine never had a knock and I replaced the pump and still no pressure. They told me my main and cam bearings were worn completely.

 

There's a NOS FoMoCo distributor gear on eBay right now.

Hope this helps!

Kevin Kessler
1953 Ford F-100

 

Wow i thought this one was way in the past.
Well the truck has been on the road now since Jan with no worse for wear.
I didn't pull a main bearing cap when the pan was off. I had the oil pump out and apart and there didn't appear to be any excessive wear to the oil pump gears. I reassembled everything, installed a new gear and a driveshft (took awhile to find both !!) and installed an electric oil pressure guage.
The oil pressure right off the bat was about 60 lbs cold and when hot at idle is 20 lbs.
So i don't think this tough little engine suffered any undo wear by driving it home 2 blocks with no oil pressure.
What i think did happen was the drive shaft has a hole drilled for the roll pin and the shaft must have been cracked at the hole....thus weakened and it chose that time and place to break right off. There are pictures in my gallery but they aren't really clear.

 

There was a bit of a story to this repair when i installed a new gear on the distributor. When the engine fire i had another noise but i needed to shim something in the dist. i figured i was pretty smart to figure it all out. I'll elaborate if anyone wanted the details.