oil gauge
Dropped oil pan and cleaned the oil screen. Drove
it around all day yesterday and today And it ran
better than ever except on the way home it
bottomed out again. Does anyone think if I
cchange out the PCV valve from the valve cover to
air filter and buy a new filter and add engine
cleaner, would that maybe fix the issue. It blows
black smoke out of the back after I crank and go
and there is a small amount of oil in the filter
Burned oil from the exhaust is gray, black smoke usually denotes a fuel rich problem. Oil in the breather cap is completely normal, grab a can of brake cleaner, remove the breather n spray the entire can thru the breather n flush 'er good. It's a brillo pad n some other kinda finer filter element inside the breather. The oil pressure read problem could be the sending unit. Does the engine begin to knock when the oil pressure gauge drops to "0"?
It does knock when the pressure bottoms out. I took the truck back to Auto zone and replaced the PCV, got a new filter and put some seafoam in the oil and topped it off with oil. It ran good on the way home. Im just hoping that works. My air filter wasn't cleanable. Its so much oil on in it. Hopefully the seafoam will clean out anything I missed in the motor.
I cleaned out the air filter housing and the breather and all of the hoses when I changed out the air filter.
PCV won't change the oil problem, the best of what you'll see there is maybe a change in how much oil is forced from the gaskets that seal the joints where oil travels. Problem with non-mopar PCVs, is they're more like a vacuum leak to the ECM, cause they allow too much airflow from the crankcase n pump it into the intake n much oil comes thru the PCV line n lands on the floor of the plenum...it is often mistaken for a leaky plenum gasket. The pic you posted of the airfilter almost looks like worn out compression rings or bad valve seals/valves. As far as the knocking noise when the pressure drops to "0"; you should replace that oil pump before it's too late, which it may already be. If it's not the pump, then you got a bad bearing somewhere n they tend to be like cancer. The loss of oil pressure to the excessive clearance of a particular bearing reduces the delivery of oil to others. You mite be able to get a higher volume pump to compensate for any worn out bearings.
Thank you so much for your insight. It's running better now from all that I've done, but you definitely have given me something to go on if it does the same thing again. Troubleshooting a problem is the worst. I've done all of the easiest things I think but I sure hope I don't have to get back under the hood or under the truck and replace anything major. But like you said, I'm more than likely gonna have to replace the oil pump and that's not gonna be any fun at all.
