No oil pressure at all after plenum upgrade and sludge removal.

Thanks for having me, new member. Ok I have a 2002 1500 4x4 quad cab with 5.9 magnum. It was running perfect no codes or engine light before i started this today. I was replacing my intake plenum with the upgraded thick plate from hughes and when i took ooff the intake there was tons of sludge under there. So I tool off the metal thing on bottom and plugged cam openings with paper towel and plugged the intake ports to try my best to keep stuff out of there. I think I may have missed some of the larger area in the rear by the dist shaft. Anyways there was extremely thick sludge in there and i scraped and wiped off as much as I could. Reinstalled intake. Started it up and it sounded fine, didnt look at gauges right away. Then about 30 seconds after firing it up i went back to check everything on dash and there was absolutely no oil pressure and my engine light was on and my check gauges light was on.. Is it possible i got a ton of broke up sludge down into the oil pan from up there and completely plugged what I imagine was a already sludged up pickup screen on the pump? Or is there some oil passages in the area under the intake i could have scraped crap into and plugged? I am going to try and drop the oil pan tomorrow and see what i can see from there. After about a minute of running it sounded like my lifters ran dry and started clattering. That's when i shut it right off. I hope I didnt kill it by trying to clean it up. :/ Any info on where I should look into would be greatly appreciated.. I have wrenched on motors my whole life so I can tackle anything suggested.. I did check to make sure the sending unit was working by hooking up a mechanical pressure tester and it read zero too. Thanks for any help offered. I am sure someone has to have been here and done that.. LOL

I'd drop the oil pan and have a look. If you had sludge up top, I bet it's just as bad or worse down below.

Thanks for the advice, me and my son are going to try and get it dropped down tomorrow,, I am sure it is horrible down there too.. Maybe the extra crap that slipped by was just enough to finally clog up the pickup tube screen. If thats the case I hope i didnt fry my rods or main bearings. :/ Ill post a pic of the inside of the pan when I pull it off.

Good luck. If the bearings are still good and you can get it running, I'd run 2 to 4 oil and filter changes (cheap oil!) through it at around 100 to 200 mile intervals with some sort of engine flush added as well to try and clean as much crap out of there as possible. After that, extend the intervals out further as you feel comfortable until you are up to your normal interval schedule. Maybe send an oil sample off to Blackstone after that to see how the engine wear is doing.

Thanks hopefully I caught it before it trashed the bearings. Going to head out there now and try to get this oil pan off. Will post a pic of what I find. I always change at 3k miles.. But will be changing a lot sooner for a while now until I think its cleaned up a bit. Just previous owner must have been changing it at 15k miles or more from all the sludge I found or just adding oil when needed (facepalm) .. Amazingly it ran great still. strange...

I had my 99 Ram with the 5.9 loose oil pressure. I'm sure for running such a short time it'll be just fine. I would ask if you happened to hear clicking coming from the motor. If you didn't I'm positive your fine. If you did hear it, then that means for whatever reason your rockers were dry and making that noise.

Also, if you have a feeler gauge and a manual, while you have the pan down, take the oil pump off, clogged or not and check the tolerances inside it. That way you know for a fact at least the pump is working should you not be getting pressure still.

One more thought-- when I had mine show now oil pressure, it said literally 0. I don't trust gauges, so I when to autozone and got a aftermarket gauge. Remove the sending unit in the back right of the motor, and screw those bad boy in its place. It's a mechanical gauge and will show you the true oil pressure. Your cluster may read zero, but if yours is like mine was it's really at 20psi(ish). For whatever reason the electric sensing unit reads anything less then normal pressure as 0 psi.

Hope this helps

Well, after a entire day of struggling to get the dang oil pan out I succeeded.. This had to be the biggest PITA oil pan I have ever removed. Had to pull off exhaust,some cross bar, raise engine and drop the dang front diff on passengers side just to get enough room to sneak it out.I am attacking an image of it. It does not look bad in the pic because there was still some oil in the sump. But there was handfuls of sludge chunks down there. Took off oil pump , spun it with a drill in a pan of oil and she shot oil out fine. Next I blew air through all passages I could find.. Then when I refilled i refilled through both valve covers to make sure both sides got lubed up. I even removed the coil wire and had my kid crank it over a couple times while the pan was off and i blew through the passages to make sure i got it best i could. Slapped the pan back on and crossed my fingers. fired right up no more awful clattering and instantly had oil pressure right to the middle of the gauge. WHEW!!! Now I got a whole day of putting all the crap back together. This oil pan was a nightmare to remove!!! I live in the rust belt so I am going to throw a few coats of paint on it to make sure its well protected from road salt .. LOL

I will try and attach an image,, i tried insterting one from a uploaded. Ill post the uploaded ones link in case this one doesnt work either. LOL https://ibb.co/honAyF

TimG75 said:

Well, after a entire day of struggling to get the dang oil pan out I succeeded.. This had to be the biggest PITA oil pan I have ever removed. Had to pull off exhaust,some cross bar, raise engine and drop the dang front diff on passengers side just to get enough room to sneak it out.I am attacking an image of it. It does not look bad in the pic because there was still some oil in the sump. But there was handfuls of sludge chunks down there. Took off oil pump , spun it with a drill in a pan of oil and she shot oil out fine. Next I blew air through all passages I could find.. Then when I refilled i refilled through both valve covers to make sure both sides got lubed up. I even removed the coil wire and had my kid crank it over a couple times while the pan was off and i blew through the passages to make sure i got it best i could. Slapped the pan back on and crossed my fingers. fired right up no more awful clattering and instantly had oil pressure right to the middle of the gauge. WHEW!!! Now I got a whole day of putting all the crap back together. This oil pan was a nightmare to remove!!! I live in the rust belt so I am going to throw a few coats of paint on it to make sure its well protected from road salt .. LOL

Click to expand...

What rust belt are we talking? Because I'm from the northeast and that's the rust belt I know

I am from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where winters last 6-7 moths out of the year.

TimG75 said:

I am from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where winters last 6-7 moths out of the year.

Click to expand...

Haha I'm from New Hampshire. I feel your pain

TimG75 said:

Well, after a entire day of struggling to get the dang oil pan out I succeeded.. This had to be the biggest PITA oil pan I have ever removed. Had to pull off exhaust,some cross bar, raise engine and drop the dang front diff on passengers side just to get enough room to sneak it out.I am attacking an image of it. It does not look bad in the pic because there was still some oil in the sump. But there was handfuls of sludge chunks down there. Took off oil pump , spun it with a drill in a pan of oil and she shot oil out fine. Next I blew air through all passages I could find.. Then when I refilled i refilled through both valve covers to make sure both sides got lubed up. I even removed the coil wire and had my kid crank it over a couple times while the pan was off and i blew through the passages to make sure i got it best i could. Slapped the pan back on and crossed my fingers. fired right up no more awful clattering and instantly had oil pressure right to the middle of the gauge. WHEW!!! Now I got a whole day of putting all the crap back together. This oil pan was a nightmare to remove!!! I live in the rust belt so I am going to throw a few coats of paint on it to make sure its well protected from road salt .. LOL

Click to expand...

That's awesome, good work! Glad you were able to get the crap cleaned outta there. I'd still run a few, short interval, oil and filter changes with a good flush through it, just to be sure.