I have no clue about engines.. can someone help please

I got on the interstate yesterday and noticed a major power loss and a bit of burnt oil smell. The oil light came on and i quickly shut the engine off. I got out and there was oil spray all under the truck. There was no puddle or dripping oil, it looked like it had just sprayed then quit. The oil stick reads about a quart low. For what it's worth the truck is a 1985 Dodge Ram 100 Custom 3.7 straight 6. It has 109,000 (no really it only has 109K it was my grandpaws)

any help will be appreciated also if you need any info or have further questions Ill do my best to try and help..

Thanks Again,

fire-stick AKA Scott!

Rear main seal blew is my first guess.

I wonder about a head gasket being blown or such. Maybe the convertor plugged up but why the oil loss? Internal pressure built up or a gasket leaked somehow. Hard to diagnose this way. Let us know what you find out would ya? :thinking:

Do you have a remote mount oil filter? If so it's possible one of the lines is rotted and blew off or apart. I know some trucks have those stock and that can happen. Major powerloss is not a good sign, nor is oil leak and drop in oil pressure. Could have taken out all the bearings in the motor.

Headgasket would not do this.

I would get it some where clean'ish, fill the oil back up, then start it with the hood open/and look under it to see where the oil is leaking from. Dont just keep adding oil and driving it. Especialy if it is getting hot or making a tap tap tap. If there is no tap or knock your truck is probably still fine but once you throw a rod etc repair will be more difficult and costly.

Good luck

those old slant 6's can take a lot of abuse but i would not run it till i found out where that oil came out from.
oil cooler lines,filter loose,old gasket stuck to block and new filter installed without looking,oil pressure sender busted,lines on a remote filter burst,ect.
at least with a leak this bad its probably easy to find.btw i have never seen a rear main seal gush like that.they just make a mess underneath.leave puddles when you park.

IsaacHayes said:

Do you have a remote mount oil filter?......

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Im almost 100% + I dont... I looked up the remote mount oil filter on google and mine doesn't look anything like what I seen.. Mine screws directly onto the engine..


And as far as running it goes.. I've only tried to strart it once.. Then I just had it towed home... While trying to start it (for mayby 1 sec.) I noticed a very slow engine crank.. almost like a mixture of .. sounding like a dead battery.. and a BONE dry engine... Which I thought was odd, because it had oil in it, just maybe its not getting it to the engine..

This sounds like an oil sending unit problem. Maybe there is a pin hole in it, or a leak on the back side?
One quart low should not make the light come on, and a little oil makes a HUGE mess fast.
The hard cranking may be a starter going out, or a low battery. I am hard presed to believe you have done any harm to this motor if all you are saying is true. I have seen thes motors seized from oveheating, then run for another 60k miles once freed up. Yes, they really are that bullet proof!!

I don't understand why 1 quart of oil would cause such a power loss when it leaked underneath the engine, something is missing in this scenario. I'll be interested to know what it is.

MARNAV1 said:

I don't understand why 1 quart of oil would cause such a power loss when it leaked underneath the engine, something is missing in this scenario. I'll be interested to know what it is.

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IF? my memory serves correct, the oil sending unit is right by the distributor. A little oil inside the cap can cause the grief he is describing. BUT................

Internet diagnoses is ridiculously vague, so I'm just throwing a few thoughts out there:

Was it one quart below the "full" mark, or one quart below the "add oil" mark? Either way, one quart low should not turn on your oil light. Check your oil again; remember to pull the dipstick, wipe it off, reinsert it fully, then pull it again and check it. If it really is only a quart low and your oil light was on, then I'd agree with others, that points to the oil sender.

Check the PCV(positive crankcase ventilation). This'll be a hose connected between the valve cover and somewhere on the intake system. PCV's are supposed to be a regularly replaced item but almost no one even thinks of them; they can do funny things when they start to fail. They can dump oil into your intake(which would cause a power loss) or blow off and make a big mess with only a little oil. Was there any smoke out the exhaust?

If your oil filter screws into the block then it's not remote-mount.

Good luck. Please report back with what the problem actually turns out to be.

:buddies:

Edit: Auto or manual transmission? A failed rear main seal could contaminate the clutch, causing what feels to be a power loss as the clutch slips.

Take off the radiator cap, and check in the radiator with your flashlight. Any mayonnaise, or is it still water or green coolant?

(just wondering about the head gasket)

OK - as Bomber said, internet mechanical diagnosis is quite challenging.

Oil light - was it the oil light or the check engine light? Oil light means a significant drop in oil pressure generally, but not necessarily, caused by low oil level. Check engine light can mean one or more of many different problems.

Burnt oil smell comes from oil hitting hot engine or exhaust components, generally not from burning oil through engine.

Loss of power would not necessarily be coupled with external oil loss. It could certainly be from low oil pressure or lack of oil, but should't happen with 4, or even three, quarts of oil in the engine.

As previously suggested, clean off the fresh oil, charge the battery and see if you can get the leak identified.

You may have more than one problem. Sometimes happens and can really complicate diagnosis.

Engine oil spray + power loss= bad engine. I'd surmise, based on the limited info, that it's some sort of catastrophic engine failure: something on the lower end (prob. a piston rod or bearing) broke, and ruptured the oil galley/block.

-dan

Well 1st off, let me say that the mechanics, (and long time friend of my dad, boy did I get lucky), gave the engine a once over and It's not that big of a problem. Well -vs- the engine being shot.

The stuff that sprayed wasn't oil, it was was anti-freeze.

There was a leak in the bottom right part of the radiator.

The thermostat stuck and wouldn't let the engine get watter.

The red light that came on was aperently due to a crazy amount of heat in the engine. (but Im sure was the OIL light which I still dont understand.)

The engine was low on oil, but... well, IDK, he said it was just low, maybe I got frizzled and checked it too soon after shutting the engine off.

IDK where the power loss and the nastey noise I got when I cranked it, but maybe the heat build up made it do that?

thanks a million... I'm gonna go take a "engine maintenance 101" class somewhere! lol

fire-stick said:

Well 1st off, let me say that the mechanics, (and long time friend of my dad, boy did I get lucky), gave the engine a once over and It's not that big of a problem. Well -vs- the engine being shot.

The stuff that sprayed wasn't oil, it was was anti-freeze.

There was a leak in the bottom right part of the radiator.

The thermostat stuck and wouldn't let the engine get watter.

The red light that came on was aperently due to a crazy amount of heat in the engine. (but Im sure was the OIL light which I still dont understand.)

The engine was low on oil, but... well, IDK, he said it was just low, maybe I got frizzled and checked it too soon after shutting the engine off.

IDK where the power loss and the nastey noise I got when I cranked it, but maybe the heat build up made it do that?

thanks a million... I'm gonna go take a "engine maintenance 101" class somewhere! lol

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When your engine over heated the oil became as thin as water so it was unable to make the pressure required so the OIL light came on low oil presure!

Unreal.

I had a thermostat stick once. The engine built up enough pressure to blow past it. The resulting shock wave of pressure fractured my radiator into 3 pieces.

So I hear this explosion under the hood and a split second later it dumped several gallons of coolant into the engine area and most of _that_ ended up hitting the windshield at 80+ mph. Did I mention it was at night when this happened.

Totally unable to see. Wipers didn't help much as the coolant has enough oil content to make it smear like crazy.

Glad to hear it wasn't a blown engine.

Diesel_Bomber said:

Check the PCV(positive crankcase ventilation). This'll be a hose connected between the valve cover and somewhere on the intake system.

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My 2007 Audi (yes, 2007, with 24,000 miles on it) had a PCV-related problem similar to the OP's truck. The PCV valve jammed in the closed position... at high throttle angles and/or RPM smoke would pour out the tailpipe and oil blew past the oil filler cap.

The PCV valve relieves crankcase pressure generated by combustion gas blowby (combustion pressure that leaks past the piston rings, a normal phenomena). Mine, being jammed shut, caused pressurized oil to blow out of almost every other orifice! So I would definitely not overlook this $4 component.

scott.cr said:

The PCV valve relieves crankcase pressure generated by combustion gas blowby (combustion pressure that leaks past the piston rings, a normal phenomena). Mine, being jammed shut, caused pressurized oil to blow out of almost every other orifice! So I would definitely not overlook this $4 component.

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The PVC valves I have seen ( very limited number ) are just pushed into a rubber grommet. Any internal engine pressure would just blow the PVC valve out of the grommet. I have to repeat, very limited number of cars, and older ones - pre 1995

I've seen the situation Scott describes a number of times. The grommet fit of the push-in type valves generally holds very well. I've had more problems with the grommets hardening with age and heat causing failure.