oil light on a Caravan 3.3; pickup clogged

[tomcat27]

a friend called last week: oil light was on idling for 10 mins at startup. the oil sending unit is known to be a problem on many Dodges; so is clogging of the small and fine-screened oil pickup.
pulled the pan, which was quick and easy, sure enough - the pickup was sludged. the whole repair took 30 mins.

 

[maxdustington]

Originally Posted by tomcat27
a friend called last week: oil light was on idling for 10 mins at startup. the oil sending unit is known to be a problem on many Dodges; so is clogging of the small and fine-screened oil pickup.
pulled the pan, which was quick and easy, sure enough - the pickup was sludged. the whole repair took 30 mins.
Did you clean or replace? I've heard that you can torch them to clean them, but I just replaced mine.

 

[Snagglefoot]

Any details about the oil he used and OCI?

 

[tomcat27]

it's a many year old van with previous owners. the most recent fill was PP; but I doubt if that caused the problem. I did not consider replacing the pickup (although not a bad idea) we just hit the pickup a few times with brake cleaner - which released an avalance of oil that was trapped. we will likely pull the pan again next oil change. the pan had obviously been off at least once before - the gasket was a felpro.

 

[StevieC]

It most likely had conventional prior and maybe some less than on-time changes and then when the PP was in there it might have done some cleaning and moved some junk to the pan where the pick-up clogged.

It's a good idea to pull the pan again at the next oil change to see it's condition. I would also maybe run some shorter OCI's for the next little while with a quality synthetic like PP.

The good news is these engines are pretty durable so I can't see it affecting it long term.

 

[sloinker]

There is a known issue and a TSB about faulty sender units on the 3.3/3.8 and the 3.6 engines. Check the codes and verify loss of oil pressure. Mostly the Pentastars but there are some cases involving the 3.3/3.8