Car overheated.. Oil pressure dropped.. Car locked up.. HELP

[Tyler]

Ok, on my way to work i thought everything was going to be fine... well.. half way to work my car JUMPED to what to me would seem like 250 degrees.. (my guage goes to 240)

then i noticed my oil pressure drop to about nothing! then when i when i put it in 1st gear and proceeded to get to work my engine totally locked up.. so my stupid *** started it back up..and the oil pressure was still low.. way lower than safe. then the car started vibrating really bad so i shut it off, and pushed it 5 blocks to my nearest friend.

my question is.. what kind of damage could be done to my engine? i know i should replace my head gaskets. what else should i look into getting replaced? I was thinking about doing GTP internals eventually. My car is running like absolute **** right now and i need it fixed..and im on a budget. Help please!

Would it be cheaper to just buy another 3.8 and swap it in?

would a 97 engine work with a 96 pcm?

[ October 18, 2003: Message edited by: Tyler ]</p>

[Wicked 3800 V6]

My guess:
The coolant somehow sprung a leak (blew a hose, etc.) or a coolant-related part stopped functioning (WP blew, belt came off). The coolant ran dry or was useless, causing the engine to overheat. Gaskets melted, internal parts melted to each other when the oil overheated, maybe leaked out, and stopped working.

Best thing for you to do would be to look at your oil (if you have any), look at your coolant (if you have any) and report back. Are you saying that it's driveable? Make sur eyou have a belt, do fluid changes if there is stuff still there. Engine might be a goner.
-Rob

[Tyler]

its driveable for about 10 min at a time.. with hour breaks between each 10 min..

[Magnus]

imho, your engine is destroyed.

Couple notes: NEVER drive an overheated car. NEVER drive a car with low oil pressure.

[Tyler]

yea i know not to drive overheating..

Its been running at normal temps lately.. but today it just shot up to 250 out of the clear blue. then i looked over at my oil pressure.. and it was low as hell!

But i just changed the oil in my car.. the oil was not milky or anything.. it looked basically brand new since i got my oil changed under 300 miles ago.

[fenderman]

I don't mean to rag on you at all because it must really suck right now to not have your car. I'd be upset too if my car was not fully drivable. However, I read time and time again how the stock gauges stink... how they don't track accurately and how they fall short of the aftermarket gauges. I also read posts on other message boards with cars that only have idiot lights with drivers complaining about the lack of instrumentation. However, the instrumentation that is there goes ignored. Gas gauges hit the "E" mark and the gas lights come on and people still insist on driving from one town to the next. Oil pressures drop and coolant temperatures peg and drivers still insist on pushing the engine and get upset when the engines don't handle the abuse thrown at them. I'm attempting to guess why it is that drivers insist on more accuracy and more information when that information goes ignored anyways. I can understand that temperature levels peg themselves almost immediately and that the gauges cannot be read 24-7 as it is important to keep your eyes on the road as well. However, once it is seen that the gauge is not in a normal position, the car should be safely pulled over and stopped.

I don't depend on my gauges to give me an accurate temperature to the 1/10th of a degree or PSI, but I do depend on them to tell me trends in how my engine is running. They aren't the most accurate instruments on the planet, but they are capable of alerting me to a problem far sooner than an idiot light would do in the same situation.

As was stated before, low oil pressure and high coolant temp = bad for your engine especially over prolonged periods of time. You'll be lucky if the engine isn't severly fried.

[shortdog273]

Damn

[Tyler]

engine is fine.. and trust me.. my eyes are on my guages more then on the road... (not literally)


i found the problem. When the coolent gets not, it rises and overflows causing it to go out the overflow tube. and im guessing that the overflow tube dumps back into the fill tube?

well since my battery has its acid everywhere.. it ate through the overflow hose. I then looked in my radiator, and it was almost bone dry. so i topped it off with half coolent half water and i havent had a problem since.....yesterday. now i gotta drive around with a gallon of water just to make sure of things till i get this fixed. (most likely later today)

[fenderman]

Tyler,
Like I said I didn't mean to rip on you. I am just trying to understand what you have been posting. You insist that you know not to drive overheating, and that your eyes are on your gauges constantly. I wasn't accusing you of not looking at the gauges, just trying as I said to understand at what point you were going to shut the car down and let it rest. You said that the temp shot up to 250 degrees which means you were looking at the gauge. The car should have been shut off. THEN the oil pressure drops to almost nothing... now two conditions are met in which the car should be shut down... apparently it wasn't. Not only that, but you then state that you put it in 1st gear and attempted to go to work. This means that the car was not in gear, and apparently not moving which probably also means you were parked, and I doubt that you would have parked anywhere that wasn't safe to leave the car. On top of this, it sounds as if you were still going to make an entire drive. When the engine quit on you you started it back up again. I'm attempting to piece together the whole "I don't drive overheating and pay attention to my gauges" and "The temperature gauge was pegged and the oil pressure was way low and I attempted to get to work. When the car shut down, I started it right back up again."

Please help me to understand how the two fit together. I don't want to accuse you of anything, but instead I want to give you a fair chance to explain to me what "driving overheating" means if pegging the temperature gauge didn't get you to turn the car off and why after the gauge showed WAY overheating why you put it in gear to go to work.

It sounds to me as if your car needs a good going through if the battery acid has been allowed to go everywhere. Before I touched those GTP internals I'd get the car back to decent mechanical shape. But that's just my own personal opinion.

EDIT: I am seriously glad to know that the car appears ok and the engine still runs as you would like it to, even though I would bet it did take quite a bit of abuse. Hopefully your problems don't get too serious.

[ October 19, 2003: Message edited by: fenderman ]</p>

[Tyler]

ok.. i posted what happened missing out details that i believe were not necessary to help me find out what was wrong.

your jumping to conclusions here. I was half a block away from my friends house sitting at the red light. I turned my car off at the redlight because i know idleing could not help the temp at all. I was in my left lane and when the light turned green i started the car up. MY CAR DIED IN THE MIDDLE OF ONE OF THE BUSIEST INTERSECTIONS IN FLORIDA... thats why i started it back up so that i could get it at least across the intersection so i can then proceed to push my car to my friends house.

i did not post on here to get criticized about me driving my car when the temp guage jumped to 250 degrees.. if that were the case i would have posted in the lounge. even though there was no harm to me. i posted to simply get an answer to what could go wrong with the engine if it overheats.. just incase i experience problems later down the road..

but on a side note.. i fixed the leak. drove the car for about an hour.. car stayed at about 180 or a tad below

[Magnus]

sweet, a horrible story with a happy ending.

You got lucky dude. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Tyler]

yes, magnus.. i did get lucky.

and even with me getting lucky, im still going to take the safety precausions and maybe order a new set of gaskets, and flush out my radiator.

But i drove the car hard.. and it pulled hard. im glad it wasnt catastrophic

[Guardiannknight]

Hey Tyler, you may want to replace your thermy. [img]smile.gif[/img] By reading what went on, my friend was having the same problems with his Caviler. But, on the Caviler there is no over flow tank. It just shots out of a tube into the engine bay to the ground. Crazy setup if you ask me. But anyways, his car would keep doing this over and over, and sometimes it would run ok, then all of a sudden, his car would take all of his coolant through the over flow tube to the ground, and cause his car to over heat. We changed his thermy and it's not done it since.

So it sounds like your thermy may be sticking, just by the way you explained everything, it sounds about the same as what happened to my friends car. Just figured I'd let yeah know. ;) I may be wrong, just adding some info to the post. :D