To make a long story short, my friend bent the frame on his '93 D350, so I bought the drivetrain from him and swapped it into my '88 Suburban. His truck had 300k+ miles on it, and never gave him any problems (besides the injection pump that he just replaced with a brand new one), but after I put 180 miles on it in my Suburban, I noticed that my oil pressure had dropped to 0. In a moment of stupidity, I assumed that since the engine had always had good oil pressure, the brand new aftermarket gauge must have failed, so I drive the short ways back to my dorm and investigate it there.

Well, after maybe 5 more minutes of driving, the truck started blowing black smoke and stopped accelerating. I limped it off the road and into a parking lot, and it made a pretty nasty clunk sound and shut off. I pulled the filter and noticed that the turbo is shot (excessive side-to-side shaft play and scoring marks on the compressor housing), and it definitely wasn't like that before. It also makes a pretty bad noise when you crank it, so I haven't tried to restart it.

I got it towed back to campus and haven't had a chance to mess with it since then, but I'd like to get it fixed soon since its my only means of transportation. My first thought is that the oil pump went out, and the lack of pressure caused the bearings in the turbo to die. But, I'm very new to diesels, so I'd love some input from more experienced on what I should do next. Mainly, what would be the best way to go about checking if the oil pump is still good?

Thanks.

 

If a lack of oil pressure did in your turbo, I hate to think of what it did to the engine.
Dump your oil into a clean container and look for metal.

 

The engine oil pump is of the positive-displacement design. That being two gears meshed, rotating in what might be viewed as a figure-eight shaped enclosure. The oil moves about in the spaces between the gear teeth from one side of the mesh, to the other.





In the Cummins 5.9 12v, oil pump is gear driven.



The bottom line is, you'll have to work really hard to screw it up. Are you sure you even have any oil?

 

Ive broke an oil pump on my truck. The idle gear broke off. $70 from cummins.

 

I can't exactly drain the oil since I live in a dorm and only have the parking lot to wrench in. I don't think they would like it if I poured oil all over the lot, and I don't have a container big enough to hold all that oil.

However, I do know that there is enough oil in it, because I changed it when I put the engine in and I checked it after all of this happened. I didn't see anything on the dipstick, and the oil looked/smelled good. I was thinking of pulling the KSB wire and the oil line going to the turbo and then cranking it and look at the flow, but that wouldn't rule out a blockage in that line. Any other ideas on what I can do?

 

Get some of your buddies to help you jack it up, set it on stands then drain it. You really need to look at your oil, check for metal bits/shavings (hopefully nothing but preferably shavings, not bits). I noticed you didn't list out any mods, is it still a stock motor? Had this happen to a buddy of mine but his turbo blew cause he over-boosted it, like a DA! I doubt that's your situation but we need all the info you got bud.

 

As far as I know, the motor is all stock, and I was cruising at like 55-60 when the oil pressure dropped. I'll see what I can do about draining the oil and report back.

 

Sorry for the delay, I've been crazy busy with school. Anyways, I pulled the drain plug today and this is what I found:



There were also some shavings in the oil.

 

Is that the only metal () or does the oil look like metallic paint

 

Unless, I'm mistaken, both the Babbit and Copper substrate of the bearing assemblies are not ferrous and won't stick to a magnet.