Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Oil pressure disaster

Afternoon. I'm after some advice regarding an episode I encountered this morning. Whilst driving approximately 5 miles this morning, I noticed a bit of smoke in the footwell. I then discovered that I had virtually no engine pressure. After the engine cut out, and then restarted soon after, I managed to get somewhere and put in 2 litres of the closest engine oil I could find 5/30, as the dips tick appeared to show no oil, although I might have been mistaken as the new oil is still very clean/transparent. The water temperature seemed fine. After driving off after about a 15 minute rest, I got just over 1 bar. This then dropped really low after a short while. After about 5 miles and a couple of cut out, I pulled over as the water temperature went sky high, and discovered the water reservoir was practically empty. I managed to get some water and filled it up and heard the expected thinking as the cold water made its way into the system. By this point, no oil or water was leaking from the engine. After about a 15 minute wait I drive about 4 miles home, and just as I was getting to my garage, I heard a pssssing noise. On inspection, water was now running out of the bottom of the engine, roughly beneath where the thermostat housing is. I imagine I have a split hose in the engine now, but has anyone any ideas as to what has caused my issue today. After driving having put the water in, the oil pressure was fluctuating between 1 and 2 bar, but then dropped towards the end. Its only been driven about 600 miles since it was serviced in August. Any idea? Its a 2004 roadster.

I'd drain the oil and see how much you really have ..... (taking into account the 2L you put in ) ... if you've got plenty then the symptoms may be due to a major overheat caused by your split pipe. If you have not much more than your 2L and you haven't had pools of oil on your garage floor I'd suspect a leak from something like a feed to the oil pressure gauge that's fed under pressure when you're running (either that or at the service they put a bit in and forgot to go back and fill the rest ... if they'd just drained it and forgotten altogether I doubt it would have made it to 600 miles) .... either way what you describe doesn't sound good for your engine unless you've been very lucky.

K

Ps .... sorry, I tend to approach everything from a 'do it yourselfer' viewpoint ..... depending on how long the 600 miles has taken maybe you should trailer it back to whoever serviced it and stand over them while they drain out the oil .... if there's not much more than your 2L and they can't point to a very serious oil leak then they have some questions to answer

Loosing that much oil if that quickly I would look to see for obvious leaks.
Is there an emulsion in the oil filler cap like mayonnaise or in the water header tank?
I assume it isn't burning oil as you would have seen black / grey smoke in clouds from the exhaust.

Smoke in the foot well might be oil burning off on the exhaust as it leaks.
As Image says I'd drain it to check just how much remains.

On checking the dipstick there appears to be plenty of oil and its clean as a whistle. What made the most difference to the pressure was when I put more water in the reservoir. Could a fault with the oil pressure be caused by an issue to do with cooling system?

Is the water in the system clean? If there is no oil sprayed everywhere then i would suspect a head gasket failure , In which case you would have emulsion in the water.

Can't vouch for what the water in the system looks like, as it got topped up once on way home, with no leak, and only started leaking once it got home and have topped it up again since then. No evidence of any oil leak anywhere, and certainly no emulsion.

If the engine is running seriously hot then yes .... the smoke in the footwell could be 'historic' deposits of oil/grease film now burning off something getting hotter than it has been .... and the low oil pressure due to the oil being really thinned and tolerances opening up as things expand .

Not sure about your specific engine but some modern engines have what seems to be alarmingly low pressure when warm even when things are ok ... as John says, check for 'mayonaise' and bubbling in the radiator or header tank which might indicate a blown head gasket .... find the split (or popped off) pipe and fix it .... fill it up and run the car for a while to check the oil pressure and look for the above symptoms .... if all seems good and there's no thumping or clanking going on try a short test drive ... you never know .... but the symptoms did sound a bit disheartening (but maybe you'll be lucky)

K

Gaskets can fail between cylinders and suck out the water without contaminating the oil sometimes. That usually leads to poor rough running and maybe steam at the exhaust .... a cylinder compression test will let you know if that is the case

K

Thanks for the advice. When I get the chance, I'll have a look for the split pipe, running the engine if needs be, and go from there. The oil pressure was better after being sat for a few minutes, and got worse when it was running again, so your suggestion of the engine being too hot definitely seems logical.

One thing which i did notice was, at some point during the issue, I wasn't getting any heat out of the heater vents, so that could be an indicator of something