Oil Pressure Line Leak

[Blonde Healey Girl]

Not 15 minutes after telling someone how reliable our LBC is, it left me disabled!!! I thought the burning oil smell was coming from a ratty truck in front of me. When we all stopped at a red light the smoke poured out from under MY hood (bonnet,sorry). Long story short, The flex line from the block that connects to the oil pressure gauge hard pipe perforated and sprayed oil on the exhaust manifold. Lost 3 qts of oil in less than 10 minutes. Kinda smelly....Glad I was not on the interstate where I would have never known it was leaking unless I had made a glance at the 22lbs of oil pressure, which usually runs around 60psi at 60mph....Guess red light stops sometimes have a silver lining....Was able to put a pipe plug into the block to get it home. Moral of the story, change all those 40 year old flex lines, brakes, oil, water, etc!!!!

 

[Bugeye58]

You were lucky. I had that happen once, and didn't notice until I heard the knocking start. As I was reaching for the key, the engine locked up. Wheeeee! I was doing about 75 on the freeway at the time. I didn't know I could hit the clutch so fast while stopping the spin!
The second time, was a different car, and the line broke at the gauge, spraying hot oil all over my leg. Not fun, either!
Jeff

 

[ThomP]

This is part of the "Joy" of owning vintage cars! They have 40 year old parts that provide some interesting moments.

I try to stay ahead of the problem by applying the addage: "If it's rubber and you touch it, replace it." For instance when servicing the CV boots on my Mini, all of the rubber got replaced. The suspension needed to be about 60% disassembled to get to the boots, so why not go the full load and replace all the rubber. It was an extra 1/2 day of effort at the most. This technique isn't 100% fool-proof, because there is always something you haven't touched yet, but it seems to help.

 

[aeronca65t]

Yeah, good job you were in stop-and-go traffic.

A few years ago I was traveling down a local freeway and spottted a car with smoke pouring out from under the hood. The driver and passenger (two young women) were standing near the car. I pulled over to help and, fortunately, there was no fire: just smoke from hot engine oil.

The oil pressure sending unit was dangling from its wire: it has somehow unscrewed itself from the engine, allowing all the oil to pump out. The engine was locked up as solid as a rock.....a perfectly good engine turned into a boat anchor due to one loose part!

 

[bighly]

I had a Fiat Spyder and had just done an oil change.
I had a 3 gals in the car and we were out on the town.
Oil filter fell off and the motor seized solid. Needless
to say I was not paying attention to the pressure gage, I was 21 years old and well, what started out well ended up
a bummer. My friend came by, picked up my dates and I
spent the rest of the evening getting the car back to the house on a flat bed.
uuuurrrggghhh !!! remember to tighten and check those little things.