I'm racking my brain on this and I can't figure it out. :mad3: My sister is driving my old 01 Ram with the 5.2 magnum in Dallas (I'm in shreveport). Gets the check engine light, 0 psi oil pressure and swears she heard a loud noise. She pulls over, a nice guy who says he's a mechanic comes to check it out, oil level a little low, but good, she fires it up, no noise, oil pressure is fine.

So I'm thinking it can't be the pressure gauge or oil pressure switch because she heard "loud noises" which I assume to be the valves, so I think it's mechanical, but the fact that it came right back up without a problem makes me think it's electrical.

I'm going to Dallas next week, I plan on running some oil and cleaner through it and maybe adding a new OPS (they're $20 new anyway) Anybody see something I don't? IT just doesn't add up to me...

I'm racking my brain on this and I can't figure it out. :mad3: My sister is driving my old 01 Ram with the 5.2 magnum in Dallas (I'm in shreveport). Gets the check engine light, 0 psi oil pressure and swears she heard a loud noise. She pulls over, a nice guy who says he's a mechanic comes to check it out, oil level a little low, but good, she fires it up, no noise, oil pressure is fine.

So I'm thinking it can't be the pressure gauge or oil pressure switch because she heard "loud noises" which I assume to be the valves, so I think it's mechanical, but the fact that it came right back up without a problem makes me think it's electrical.

I'm going to Dallas next week, I plan on running some oil and cleaner through it and maybe adding a new OPS (they're $20 new anyway) Anybody see something I don't? IT just doesn't add up to me... This happened to me on an old school (pre Magnum) 318, it was the pressure relief valve in the oil pump, it was sticking in its bore occasionaly, I just replaaced the oil pump with a HV one as it had to come out anyway. My dod took the old pump apart, cleaned it, and put it in his work van and drove it another 120K miles.

I have to agree with Murfman. I've had the same problem with the relief valve on a LA 360 one time. I swapped out the pump to be safe since I couldn't seem to find the cause and it fixed the problem. I later went back and took a closer look at the pump and found the sticking relief valve.

Murf, wasn't there a TSB in the early Magnums about the gear on the oil pump driveshaft spinning on the shaft? I seem to remember replacing a lot of oil pump drives and the bushing back in the mid '90s. He doesn't mention what year he has but I know we had a lot of those with 318s, 360s and 3.9L V6s. Might also be something to look at.

I'm racking my brain on this and I can't figure it out. :mad3: My sister is driving my old 01 Ram with the 5.2 magnum in Dallas (I'm in shreveport). ...

He doesn't mention what year he has but I know we had a lot of those with 318s, 360s and 3.9L V6s. Might also be something to look at.

01 5.2 is what he said.

Duane

Hmm, how did I miss that? Lol. No more beer for me.

No more beer for me.

C'mon now, don't do anything drastic, we're just talkin here. I thought it might be crap in the pump, atleast thats what I told my dad it was. I recomended him running a few quarts of oil through it and seeing if it happens again. I'll be in Dallas later this week, so I can replace the pump then if it does need it.

I've only worked on 350 chevy and 4.0 jeep blocks before, but from the pictures on rockauto.com they look close enough to what I'm used to, could I replace the pump where the engine sits with the oil pan off?

You can but getting the pan off could be a problem because of the front crossmember. here is a complete tech write up for replacing the rear main seal on a 5.2 an it also includes replacing the oil pump from pavement sucks :)

http://pavementsucks.com/tech/rearmain.php

Have fun though, I was lucky enough to already be pulling my engine at the time so replacing the pump was a cinch.

Thanks for the tech. I need to come to this dodge board more often.

Be very careful that the pump is seated completely flush with the main cap before tightening the bolts on the pump. If not, you will get the end of the pump in a bind and it will seize the shaft inside. It's a little tricky to get it seated in there correctly sometimes, but take you time or the pump will be ruined. Also, it's generally recommended that you replace the pickup with a new one. You can clean the old one, but you can never be sure you got all the crap out of it. Be safe and get a new one, it''s cheap insurance.

Be glad you have a Magnum engine. The one piece oil pan gaskets are a lot easier to mess with than the old 4 piece ones on the LA engines, lol.