Dead at 100K ????

Just got the call from the local Jeep dealer. My 2000 XJ suddenly lost oil pressure yesterday on the freeway. Fell from 40 to 15. Dealer says pump is working as is the pressure sender. Low pressure is due to "too much internal clearance." (Bearing....ect.)
They said to fill with straight 30w oil and don't go too far from home! Yikes! I only have 104K on it from new and changed the oil every 3K miles. Anyone else have this happen to them? Had been toying with the idea of getting a Commander so the kids can have headrests (Now that they need them.) and we all could have a little more room. Wife says she's done with Jeeps "Forever" if this engine is really blown after only 7 years of mostly commuting to work.
Anyone ever to a complete transplant of a 4.0 on an XJ? Should I trade it in, or go for a rebuilt job at $2K or just slam in another used engine. Plenty of those around for $800. Any advice appreciated. -SF

Trade it in while its still worth something.

Get an earlier XJ (96-99) with the older type cylinder heads. (0630 #)



I personally don't like the Commanders. Far too bloated if you ask me.

Um tell the dealer to give you back XJ ASAP. I.E. before they do something to make it "how they say it is". There is no way that you have this paticular probem with good maintence, well maybe a .0005% chance. if you know anything about working on them put a new pump or a screen on it or check the voltage from the sender. If it runs just as smooth and you haven't heard anything weird from the engine then they are trying to give you the shaft. Dam this pisses me off and this XJ isn't even mine!!!!:smsoap:

Man, that's unusual to go at 100K, may I ask what brand and weight oil you were using and how many miles between oil changes?

That's what I was gonna say!

It's not even broken in yet!

If it is the bearings, why not just replace those? It can be done without pulling the motor. I have the same issue with the bearings (2001 w/80K miles) but the previous owner used the Jeep to tow a lot. I use 20W-40 to keep it above zero and stopped using Fram oil filters. I don't think running at 15psi will do any harm to the motor (I've heard anything over 10 is fine). As long as you don't have a cracked head, the motor should be good for another 100k miles.

stanislaussteve said:

". . . suddenly lost oil pressure yesterday on the freeway. Fell from 40 to 15. Dealer says pump is working as is the pressure sender. Low pressure is due to "too much internal clearance." (Bearing....ect.)"

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I'm with 1985xjlaredo on this one--rescue your Jeep from the incompetent. You suddenly lost oil pressure and the reason is bearing wear, etc.??? Don't think so. Sounds like complete BS from the dealer.

Any chance you can pull the sending unit and get a real pressure gauge in there temporarily so you know whether you really have a pressure problem (failing oil pump, obstruction, etc.) or just a bad sending unit, gauge, or wiring?

i work at a independent shop and have seen this exact senario play out. however it was a 4.0l grand cherokee regular maintance like 90 thousand on the clock. all of sudden while the lady was driving the oil pressure dropped. checked pressure with a mechanical gauge and found it to be 13psi. pulled the rod bearings out and sure enough they had excessive clearance to them. the lady bought a new motor at that point. what i'm getting at is that it is very possible. most 4.0l go 200,000 without thinking about it with much worse maintance. but stuff like that happens. we call those monday and or friday cars. meaning they were assembled when someone didn't want to be at work.

as for changing the bearings in the car. before i got into the independent shop game i was a bmw master tech at a bmw dealer. Well bmw had a ton of rod bearing problems on e46 m3's, m roadsters, m coupes. anything with a s54 6 cylinder in it. on some cars i did 3 sets of rod bearings with in 20,000 miles while bmw was trying to figure out the problem which they claim was the material choices for the bearings. however if you see the semi dry sump setup they tried to create you would understand why it gets oil starved. Point to this is yep you can change some bearings in the car. it depends on what bearings are out of spec some are easy to change some not so much. rod bearings are pretty easy to do in the car. once the oil pan is down. Mains are bit more trickey because you really shouldn't remove one main at time and then re torque it. however i have seen it done and work. If the cam bearings are hemoraging your oil. then your screwed. You will basicly need to pull the motor at that point to get them out. they are removed with a special slide hammer and a decent amount of the motor has to come apart. that being said you may as well replace motor depending on mileage.

if the motor isn't knocking and you still have some oil pressure and you want to try rod bearings i would go for that because they are the easiest to do. i would probably put a fresh oil pump in too. If there is some noise coming from the motor forget it. you've caused to much damage to the other bearings in the motor from oil starving them. in most cases all the bearings will be scored up and then its not really worth messing with that motor anymore unless you want to turn it into a stroker.

i vote stroker. that was my plan before i decided to do a lsx swap into mine. sorry i heart lsx motors.

Last time I checked the minimum hot oil pressure at idle for 4.0s was 13 psi!

What was, or is the oil pressure at 2000 rpm?

If it truely is internal wear I would either trade it in for an older, very well kept model with low mileage since the heads on the 2000 year are know for cracking, and get a 99 or earlier model. The other option is to drop a heavier weight oil in it (40 weight or 20W50), but I would like to know what the oil pressure at 2000 psi is and what oil it has in it currently before recomending a heavier oil. If it is 15 psi cold at start up and 2000 psi, then there is something seriously wrong, if, and I mean if the gauge and oil pressure sensor are working correctly. I would at least drive it somewhere else for a second opinion.

I wonder if this another fram oil filter casualty?

Tried to get to it every 3K miles but it was probably 3500-4000 at times. No more than that though. Always 10w30, usually Penzoil but some Castrol GTX as well. Tried to use a WIX filter but at times have used the "premium" FRAM filters. The $9.00 ones in the fany can with the orange lid. -SF

Well no strange noises yet. I wonder how far you can go on the freeway at 15psi before hearing noise from the top end? Anyway, it cost me $150 for the pressure and voltage tests at the dealer. I have no reason to think they missed anything. I plan to drain the oil Thursday and load it up with 30 weight and some viscocity enhancers. Hopefully that gets the pressure back up. -SF

1st, Thanks to all for the advice. Untill 10 minutes ago I had complete faith in the Fremont Jeep Dealer. Now I'm wondering?????? This is actually my 1st service dept visit since the warranty expired at something like 30K miles. I've been fairly impressed with the Jeep all these years.
Anyway, when I noticed the low pressure I was going 65 mph over Hwy 17 at 11pm witht he family in the car. I slowed to 50, but it kept falling. Got into town and it was ~15-17psi at 2000 rpm.
Next day I got a new sender from the dealer. Startedit up and it went straight to 45psi. About 5 miles down the road it started falling again. Back to 15psi @ 2000 rpm by the time I rolled into the dealership.

So, is there a Fram oil filter in there now or not?

Yes, Fram filter in there right now But only for a few more hours. I will do a fluid change today and update everyone tonight. Thanks, -Steve

If the pressure is at 45 when you first start it up (it sounds like the engine is cold when you're doing this) and drops to 15 after driving and its got warmed up, that sounds like the classic Fram problems.

My old boss had a 98 XJ with the 4.0 that I was doing some NSS work on for him. When I jumped in to drive it about 20 miles up to my dads shop to work on it, his oil pressure was about 35-45 at cold idle....which i thought was a little low (his motor had about 115K on it at the time). By the time I was a few miles down the road, the idle pressure was at about 13-15 and it was bouncing back and forth. Immediately I thought bad sender. However when I got it to the shop and opened the hood, first thing I looked at was to see if he had a Fram on there (he does his own oil changes), sure enough he did.

When I brought it back to him later that afternoon, I asked him how long his pressure had been that low, of course his typical response was "i didn't know that was a low pressure for that engine"... I told him about the horror stories about Frams and how cheap the internals are, and told him to switch it to almost any other kind of filter...such as a Wix, K&N, Mobil 1..etc etc. He took my advice, and sure enough, pressure was right back up to normal

Personally, I run Napa Gold filters in mine. Been using them for over 2 years now in my XJ, a 3.7L KJ, and for about a year now in a 5.3L Silverado, with zero oil pressure problems to date. The Napa Gold brand filters are actually a Wix (one of the best brands out there) filter, just with Napa Gold slapped on it. The one for the XJ usually costs me about $6 and some change...right around $6.50 if memory serves me.

What is the deal with the fram filters? And does fram make any off brand filters to worry about?
Edit: I use wix or the Oreilly brand filter.

stanislaussteve said:

Yes, Fram filter in there right now But only for a few more hours. I will do a fluid change today and update everyone tonight. Thanks, -Steve

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Get a 40 weight oil, not a straight 30. It will give you some more oil pressure. A straight 30 will give you the same pressure once it warms up.

I'd get rid of it while it's worth something.

Its most unlikely that your oil pressure just dropped. If the oil pump failed you would have no pressure. Sounds like the dealer is trying to shaft you. Get it back and confirm the oil pressure with a mechanical gauge. If in fact the pressure reads low on the dash but the mechanical gauge shows at least 40 psi at more than 1000 rpm then you have some sort of electrical problem. I have not heard of the problem with Fram filters but that might also account for the problem, in which case then the dealer really is trying to look out for you. I would think, though, that the dealer would have heard of such a problem.:dunno:

Maybe drop a quart of Lucas oil stabilizer in there as well. That stuff is thick!

Oil filters, Fram, oil pressure problems .... see:

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=902303&highlight=oil%2A+filter+fram

Consider getting the larger oil filter discussed above, more filter media, less oil pressure drop across the filter, change the oil filter and check the hot and cold oil pressure at idle and at 2000 rpm, write down and post the values here.

Spend $40 and buy and use your own mechanical oil presure test gauge.

Then change the oil, try straight 40 weight, or if you are concerned about very cold morning start up flow use 20W50. Retest and record the oil pressures. Then if you want some more pressure, replace one quart of oil with Lucas oil additive.

Do not try synthetic oil. Part of your problem may be from using Penzoil dyno oil. It is bad about leaving sludge and wax deposits behind. If you put in a synthetic or a solvent like oil cleaner and flush it, it is likely to loosen too much crap all at once and plug the oil pump inlet screen!:shiver: Try Exxon or Castrol dyno (non-synthetic) oils if you can get them.

I had, have low oil pressure pressure problems since over a year ago. I replaced the oil pump and screen with a high flow pump, and replaced the rod and main bearings which were actualy still OK, and the oil pressure sensor on mine and I still ended up using 20W50 plus Lucas oil additive and the 1 quart oil filter to get consistant adequite oil pressure at hot idle. I don't trust my dash gauges enough to run at 10 - 13 psi, and I am now getting 20-22 psi minimum at hot idle after a long hard drive, and 60 psi at cold start up. I have put 20,000 miles on it since the first low oil pressure problem occured over 16 months ago. If I was running 10W30 during the summer mine would probably register 2 psi hot idle oil pressure.:shiver:What is also interesting is mine does not burn oil. I think it had a head, ring job before I aquired it.

Just because a dealer (stealership) has heard of a problem is no gaurantee they are going to divulge that info! They are there to sell new cars and big ticket bloated repair jobs, not to help you save money.