Greetings. I don't know a lot at this point, but I'll tell you what I know.
A friend of mine just bought a 92 Ranger, manual trans. yesterday from a neighbor.
The neighbor works at Ford and loves his trucks.
He always follows the maintenance rules and at 100,000 mi had a the timing belt replaced. It has approx. 150K miles on it.
When my friend was driving it home, said it suddenly made a noise, the oil pressure bottomed out and the truck died.
He's at work and can't tell me anything else yet.
When he gets home, my husband and I are going to try to get him to just take it to the garage (he isn't really mechanically inclined).
Any clues on this vague info I've given. Sorry it isn't much.
I'm wondering if the oil pump went out. It is a 92 and does have 150K miles.
My neighbor isn't home and I know the neighbor had no idea this was about to happen. He just drove it 0n a 70mi round trip. Don't think he would have done that if he suspected something was going to go wrong with it.
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Vanessa:sunglasse

When my friend was driving it home, said it suddenly made a noise, the oil pressure bottomed out and the truck died.


Going to need more info. Sounds like a 2.3L, which are generally dependable engines. 150K isn't too bad, I have a 87' 5.0L Marquis with 200K+. What was the noise? Is he sure that the truck just didn't die and the oil pressure dropped for the engine not rotating anymore?

It's hard to say what happened. He might want to change the oil and check for metal savings. If the oil looks normal, pull the plugs and turn the engine over with a breaker bar or 1/2" socket wrench. If it rotates, I would probably hook up a oil pressure gauge to it to verify that the oil pump is working properly. Also check to make sure that when the crank is rotated, the cam is rotating as well.

However, blindly starting it again could make matters worse. I wouldn't touch an engine that's been ran out of oil. If there's no shavings, essentially the engine could be rebuilt, given that there isn't any burnt up journals or bad bearings. Either way, if it did run out of oil, he might look into swapping a junk yard engine.

I am not fimilar with the oil pump drive on that motor, or else I would suggest to prime it to verify that the pump is working that way. That would be the safest route. Sounds like something busted that turns the oil pump.

Pete

Just had to replace the oil screen on my 91 - the 90 -92 tend to have the oil pan gasget fall apart and sucked up into the oil screen - clogging the screen not allowing oil to pass - I dropped the pan - sure enough, the screen was totally clog - I removed what was left of the oil pan gasget from in and on the pan - put on a new oil pump - work great - all kinds of oil prussure.

Note - I could not get the pan out of the truck - I loosened the motor mounts, jacked the motor up, dropped the pan to the cross member and did all the work from there. It was tight but do able.