I believe their might be. I here its going to be a doozy. Your in trouble if you don't study, you'll loose. I need to go change my breaks, they are squealing, otherwise I might study.

 

LOL!

 

That would be me and I checked with a mechanical gauge. I first checked with an industrial gauge I had laying around in the garage then I bought an automotive dash gauge from Autozone so I could see what it was while driving. Jeep runs great so I plan to drive it as long as possible before replacing the engine. So far it has been 27k miles with this condition. One possibility is maybe a cam bearing walked out of its bore.

 

Unfortunate update...It appears I drove and tested long enough for the coolant to come to temp, not the oil. About 10-15 minutes after the coolant coming to temp the oil pressure drops to the point it had been before.

Don't really notice any appreciable coolant loss and even the ugly oil I got rid of on the change did not look milky, just overdue. I now have synthetic in it. Don't know if it and don't know how the look of it changes if coolant get in it.

Well I have the valve cover off now and will do some run testing, looking for coolant and or crack to appear, make sure oil is coming up through all lifters etc.


darn

 

Sorry and welcome to the club, I am in there with you at 4psi. If it makes you feel better my oil light has been coming for about 27k. Some advice DO NOT TRY TO MAKE YOUR GAGE HAPPY WITH THICK OIL. Higher pressure is a falsehood and will only make matters worse. Thick oil with STP or Lucas will starve your rockers for 3 to 5 minutes on a cold startup. If anyone has thicker oil take a look through the oil fill cap and time how long it takes before you see any oil get up there...it will scare the hell out of you.
Drive EASY and be gentle when accelerating and you may have many miles left. If in fact you have gotten coolant in the oil I would rule out rebuilding in favor of a crate or salvage engine. I will set aside a motor fund and drive mine as long as I can. It has turned into a quest to see how much longer it will run. What weight synthetic are you running? Since synthetic flows good at cold temp you are safe to go up in viscosity.

 

rotella t6 5w40 is what I intend to use. I agree about the not using thicker oil to make the gauge happy. My trick is I bought this to tow a 2000lb boat/trailer so it will have a bit more work to do that just putting itself around town (which it will do the most as my wife's dd. I will tow about 45 miles each way probably 3 times a month once it warms up.

Like I said, no visual indicator in the old oil I removed, no visual crack sign. Will make cardboard oil damn and run with cover off to visual. Shouldn't a compression test show poor compression on cylinder 3 or 4 if the head is cracked? Haven't done one yet, just thinking it would...or is it one of those "sometimes" answers?

 

Good oil choice. Crack would not affect compression unless it was on combustion side and fairly large, in which case your engine would be running rough. Glycol will make oil turn black (water makes the milkshake look) on a very small leak the water will evaporate out of the oil via the ccv but the glycol will accumulate turning the oil dark. A simple test is to put a drop of oil on a business card and let it soak in for several hours. The oil drop should disperse in a circular pattern about the size of a quarter and the color should be mostly uniform. A black bulls-eye in the center is indicative of glycol.
How often do you add coolant? Does your oil look black at 3000 miles?
It only takes a SMALL leak to do damage...you can offset this by changing oil more frequently and not using conventional (silicate) or HOAT antifreeze....use the "any make,any model"stuff because it is silicate free. Glycol will eventually damage bearings but silicate is water glass (sand) and will GRIND away your bearings,rocker pivots and lifters FAST!

 

Here I was looking for milky and I guess the black is what I should have been looking for

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/member...87624-rockers/

Wouldn't the glycol have rather a cleaning effect instead of the sludge I see here though? Maybe that's tranny fluid I'm thinking of...

Also, are you saying you replaced the head and are lolling along with low oil pressure or are you lolling along with cracked head AND low oil pressure?

 

The glycol turns the oil black but I don't think it would cause the sludge shown in that photo. No I have not replaced the head, I do not know for sure if it is cracked....but since I have low oil pressure it is suspect or head gasket. I had a very gradual loss of coolant (about a quart in 12 months) but that has stopped since adding a bars pellet. The Bars would not fix a cracked head but could fix a leaking head gasket. Right now I am monitoring pressure and noise level and neither have changed in the past 18 months. No I'm not lolling along, this is a very busy DD that cruises the interstate at 70 plus alot of stop and go in town. I also pull a utility trailer and a 20' pontoon. It uses no oil and gets 22mpg on the highway. Other than the low pressure alarm chime bugging me it performs like new.

 

This is good news for me, I mistakenly thought you were treating it with major kid gloves! Thanks!

 

Gentle acceleration and keeping revs below 3500 when possible...in other words, driving with common sense! As soon as the weather gets better I plan to drop the pan and do an inspection. If needed I will roll in a set of bearings if the crank journals are ok. The main bearings affect oil pressure the most without causing a knock. If your rod bearings were worn enough to cause low pressure you would definitely know it by the knocking and even then it might not affect pressure that much. Mains and cam journals have the most effect on pressure. Why? Because the rods only get hit with pressure when the oil holes in the crank line up with the pressurized galleys during each revolution of the crankshaft. The mains,lifters,cam journals have constant pressure.