oh no :(
 

I was driving home yesterday from work, I hear a kind of whoosh noise and almost instant loss of power. I glance down at my faithful gauge cluster, I now have no oil pressure when less than 3 minutes before I had it pegged at 3 bar. She is still running, but running rough, as I am coasting to a stop along side the interstate. I pop it in neutral and put the engine to rest as soon as I realize I have no oil pressure, after I do a quick glance under the hood for something obviously broken and find nothing I try starting it and she is rough to roll over and will not start. I call for a tow and after she had been setting for about 15 minutes I thought I would try rolling it over again, she starts and is running smooth but still no oil pressure so I kill it immediately and wait out my tow. Anyone have any Ideas?

valves haven't been adjusted in around 12k oil changed about 2.5k ago. Nothing even dripped from the underside in the 45 minutes I was parked on the side of the road.

1980 300SD w116 chassis OM617 engine

The good news is I doubt you did any long term damage. It was smart to put it in neutral and shut it off quickly.

The downside is you either have an oil leak or your oil pump isn't working properly. Or maybe one of your oil lines broke?

Is there any oil in the engine?

Danny

I didn't check the oil, in hindsight that should have been the first thing I did after restart with no oil pressure, but I have always check it and top it off at fill ups, and last fill up was 220 miles ago. So if there is no oil, it must me a helluva leak. Like I said there was nothing dripping from it at all on the road side, I would think that a busted oil line or oil leak would have caused some splashing to the underside of the vehicle which would at least drip a drop in 45 minutes.

You have an electric oil sender switch on your car. That's the first thing I'd check. Could you see oil being splashed around the valve train with the fill cap removed when running? A simple test would be to pull the electric sender and start the engine. If oil starts shooting out the fitting, you've got pressure.

Electric oil sender? Are you sure about that Kerry? My 80 300SD has a mechanical oil pressure gauge.

Never had a Benz with an electric oil-pressure sender--all have been hardlines that actually carry oil to the gauge. That being said, has anyone ever heard of one of the gauges failing? Possible I suppose, but gauge failure wouldn't explain the other symptoms of "whoosh" and loss of power.

Patrick Skelley
Bedford, Virginia
1970 Unimog 406
1972 350SL 4.5
1972 300SEL 6.3
1978 240GD
1979 300GD
1987 300TD
Other stuff . . .

Oooops, sorry. I thought it was a 126. You're right, the 116's have mechanical gauges I think.

You might want to double check the '87 300TD.

Guess if I wanted to be snarky, I could point out that the '87 TD is owned by my wife, so truthfully I have never had a Benz with anything but the hardline . . .;)

But your observation is well taken!

kinda a "click" then "woosh" actually, and the woosh may have been the engine winding down rapidly since it is a turbo. I went from 75 to 65 before I could get off to the side of the road, I actually thought the engine died until I looked at the tach.

Your engine might have died. The tach may just have been showing the engine turning as a result of the wheels/transmission turning it.

First, check the oil level. If you have oil, most likely something with the oil pump is damaged. If you have no oil, well then obviously you developed a massive leak somewhere.

If it was just the oil sender going bad, why would your engine be running rough all of a sudden? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the fact that the engine was running rough along with the low pressure to me points to the fact that it is engine related versus gauge related.

Kindly read and understand the following post before posting again on this forum:

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?t=127342