Originally Posted By: tonycarguy
What's your most extreme abuse story of an internal combustion engine?
My father's 92 Dakota 5.2
It had the early 5.2/5.8 lower intake plenum leak problem and had a crankcase *full* of gritty carbonized junk, which piled up in the oil pan to sufficient depth to block the oil pickup screen- resulting in 0 oil pressure after driving for a while. Dad decided to gimp the truck home a few miles at a time, shutting off and letting the oil screen clear whenever the pressure hit zero and the lifters started to get loud (he wasn't aware what was actually happening with the pickup screen, he just realized that shutting down for 2-3 minutes would restore at least a few PSI of oil pressure and shut the lifters up for another few miles).
We found the pan full of what looked like coffee grounds (about half a coffee can's worth). After all the abuse, we figured the engine was probably a goner, but we cleaned the pan and then flushed 10 gallons of kerosene through both oil fillers (it has a cap on each valve cover) to try to clean it up. We filtered the kerosene through old rags, and ran it back through several times. When the rags stopped showing grit after straining, we filled it with cheap oil and ran it for 20 minutes. Changed the oil and filter, re-filled and the darn thing ran perfectly. In fact, it ran so well we fixed the intake plenum gasket, and he racked up another 50k miles or so before he bought a new Ram last fall. Oil consumption was on the high side after that incident, but it never lost oil pressure again, never made any abnormal sounds, and only smoked slightly. He's still got the truck to use as a "beater," and it still runs well.
