We had a power outage at work Monday. Bunch of dead machines and the bosses were about to start passing out brooms, so I took off...

I went to a local lake that some of the 4 wheeler clubs frequent. We're in a drought so all the lakes are dried up but there's a few good hills to climb.

Played on the hills for a little bit and saw a pretty good size mud hole. I noticed there weren't any recent tire tracks going in or out of it, which is usually a sign that's it's eaten a few trucks and everybody is staying out of it.

Poked around at it with a big stick to see how deep the water was, how deep was the mud, how hard the bottom was... was there a bottom..

Felt like about a foot of water, a foot of clay mud and a hard bottom... so I rolled on in... dumbass.

the rear wheels were just getting into the mud when the right front of the truck took a dive... I should have checked depth on the OTHER side of the hole...



Ever since my step sons started driving and hanging out with their idiot friends... tearing their trucks up at the lakes.. I've been preaching to them about NOT thrashing their vehicles... If you're stuck, DON'T make it worse by breaking your stuff... shut her down and call somebody, don't drive with your testicles.

Well.... when the truck took a dive I knew it was too late to back out, tried to power through... back up, power through, back up, power through... you know the drill...
The whole time thinking.. there is NO WAY I'm calling those two to come pull me out...
Yup. My testicles thrashed it pretty hard getting out of there.

The mud fountains coming up from the shifter holes were pretty impressive though.

Needless to say it ran like crap after that. Took a day for the clutch to feel right again. The brakes still don't feel right. It was steadily loosing power all the way home. And after about 10 miles the oil pressure started dropping. usually runs about 30 psi. Dropped to about 20 and hung there.

There are only 2 screws holding the distributor cap on, so I'm sure some water got in there. I pulled the cap and cleaned contact points in the cap and on the rotor. Cleaned the points and reset the gap, it was down to about .012.
As far as the ignition goes, it runs better now than when I got it.

The next morning I started the truck up to go to work and it shows 0 oil pressure for about 15 or 20 seconds... rocker arms clattering away, then pressure comes up and it quiets down. Went on to work and everything was fine until about 3 miles from work, 10 from the house, and oil pressure started dropping to about 10 pounds and hung there.
After work I started it up and same thing, no pressure for 20 seconds and then it comes up.

I changed the oil and filter... again. I've changed the oil and filter 3 times in the last month. And it's sludge every time.

At first I was thinking maybe they used cheap oil or something, lots of buildup breaking loose..

Now.. I'm thinking the bearings are going out and me thrashing on it sped the process up.

I was using 10w40 Rotella. I put 5w30 Quaker State in today. It was 23 degrees today, was hoping the thinner oil might help... I know that 90w in the gear train feels like cement till it warms up. Same thing, rattled for a little bit then pressure comes up. Then after 10 miles or so it drops and hangs at 8 or 10 psi.

Guess I'll start hunting down another vehicle to drive and figure out if I want to rebuild the 6 or swap in a v8