Hi Again. Does anyone know how to resolve a low oil pressure problem with a
1995 Bonneville 3.8L? The car has high mileage but runs fine.

The parts people tell me the oil pump is integrated and can;t be replaced.

Any ideas?

Thanks

John

Get a mechanical gage on it to confirm the true pressure, first. Yes the
pump is part of the front cover.
"News" <roundtheworld11 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote



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Shep,

Not quite correct - the oil pump is mounted into a cavity in the
front cover, but all the pieces of the pump can be replaced. Very
seldom is it required to replace the front cover to solve an oil pump
problem. There are times though where I wish the 3.8L used the oil
pump system from the old pre-FI/DIS blocks.

I agree 100% on checking the pressure with a mechanical gauge - the
oil pressure senders on the 3.8L engines leave a lot to be desired.

Regards,
Bill Bowen
Sacramento, CA


"Shep" <djsljsrn (AT) capital (DOT) net> wrote:

Great advice! Thanks!

"William H. Bowen" <wh_bowen (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote

The issue I was addressing was the cover must come off, no external access.
"William H. Bowen" <wh_bowen (AT) sbcglobal (DOT) net> wrote



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Shep,

On that point you are correct - that is why I mentioned that the
older setup was superior from the service standpoint.

Regards,
Bill

"Shep" <djsljsrn (AT) capital (DOT) net> wrote:

William H. Bowen wrote:

Agreed, but the older setup was a terrible system from
a reliability point of view. The newer system have almost
no failures when compared to the older ones.

Ian

Yep, when I was an Olds SM in the 80's lost plenty of rwd 3.8 engines.
"shiden_kai" <V-L-M (AT) hotma1l (DOT) com> wrote



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Shep & Ian,

I'll defer to you two gentlemen on the reliability of the old
system, since you have more experience in 3.8s of that era than I do
(I was working on mostly AMC during the 70s and early 80s).

You do have one "single point of failure" item that will cause the
oil pump to quit without the engine shutting off: the roll pin that
engages the the oil pump drive shaft. Anything else that would cause
the oil pump gears to quit turning would also kill the distributor.

However, let me add that AMC used the same oil pump setup on their
V-8s (290 through 401) from 1964 through 1991and I never came across
one of them that had an oil pump failure that caused engine damage.
One other advantage of the old type pump setup is that it was bloody
easy to prelube an engine using an electric drill with an adaptor to
drive the oil pump shaft.

Shep, I'm curious - what was the most common engine failure on those
old RWD 3.8s?

Regards,
Bill Bowen
Sacramento, CA


"Shep" <djsljsrn (AT) capital (DOT) net> wrote: