This past Sunday I was planning on taking the GN to the local track for a test and tune session. Several hours before the track opened, I decided to take the GN out for a spin to double check the tune and boost level. So I drive around and get the car warmed up and find a straight road for a WOT blast. I get to the spot and nail it, the car starts accelerating hard and all the sudden my worst nightmare happens. The car is smoking beyond belief and I’m leaving this huge trail of oily smoke behind me. I immediately get off the throttle, the car slows down and is running fine, however it’s still smoking from underneath the car. So I drive for around looking for a good area to pull off, I stop the car, pop the hood and oil is leaking heavily from somewhere under the engine while it’s running. The valve train started to get noisy due to the lack of oil (no other strange noises beyond that), so shut the car off. Beneath the car was a huge puddle of oil and the worst is going through my mind, that I’ve ruined the engine.
I immediately call Pat Broughton and Richard Clark for help, I’m sitting off the side of road and there’s no way I’m going to fire the car up again. About a hour later Pat and Richard arrive in Richard’s rollback and we pull the car on the pullback and head to Richard’s shop. If we had took a poll at that time, all three of us would have bet anything that the motor was toast.
We get the Richards shop, unload the car, put it on a lift and start inspecting under the car. There’s oil all over the bottom of the car, however it was mostly on the lower passenger side of the engine. Due to the spray pattern of the oil, Pat was thinking that the oil was pressurized out of the block (which ended up being correct). There was no obvious place that the oil was coming from although Pat’s eagle eye noticed something weird with the oil pan gasket. It looked like there was a section of the gasket missing. So we remove the oil pan and the gasket did have a small tear in it, but not enough to cause any of this. We remove the two middle caps and checked the bearings, they were in good shape and the crank journals were as good as new. So we put everything back together and Pat thinks it’s a good idea to oil back in the engine, remove the cam sensor and prime the oil system to see if we can tell where the oil was escaping from. It didn’t take but a couple of seconds priming the oil pump to see where the oil was coming from. Of all places, none of us would have thought oil would be shooting out of the oil pressure switch, but it sure was. Pat removed the oil pressure switch and one of its terminals was very loose and oil was coming out of that loose terminal.
We replaced the oil pressure switch, put everything back together and fire it up. Engine ran great, oil pressure was great and there were no leaks. All the oily smoke earlier came from the oil spraying onto the crossover.
You’d never had convenience Sunday that 7 hours later I would be driving my car home.
Once again, I owe Pat and Richard a huge THANK YOU!
I immediately call Pat Broughton and Richard Clark for help, I’m sitting off the side of road and there’s no way I’m going to fire the car up again. About a hour later Pat and Richard arrive in Richard’s rollback and we pull the car on the pullback and head to Richard’s shop. If we had took a poll at that time, all three of us would have bet anything that the motor was toast.
We get the Richards shop, unload the car, put it on a lift and start inspecting under the car. There’s oil all over the bottom of the car, however it was mostly on the lower passenger side of the engine. Due to the spray pattern of the oil, Pat was thinking that the oil was pressurized out of the block (which ended up being correct). There was no obvious place that the oil was coming from although Pat’s eagle eye noticed something weird with the oil pan gasket. It looked like there was a section of the gasket missing. So we remove the oil pan and the gasket did have a small tear in it, but not enough to cause any of this. We remove the two middle caps and checked the bearings, they were in good shape and the crank journals were as good as new. So we put everything back together and Pat thinks it’s a good idea to oil back in the engine, remove the cam sensor and prime the oil system to see if we can tell where the oil was escaping from. It didn’t take but a couple of seconds priming the oil pump to see where the oil was coming from. Of all places, none of us would have thought oil would be shooting out of the oil pressure switch, but it sure was. Pat removed the oil pressure switch and one of its terminals was very loose and oil was coming out of that loose terminal.
We replaced the oil pressure switch, put everything back together and fire it up. Engine ran great, oil pressure was great and there were no leaks. All the oily smoke earlier came from the oil spraying onto the crossover.
You’d never had convenience Sunday that 7 hours later I would be driving my car home.
Once again, I owe Pat and Richard a huge THANK YOU!
