Originally Posted by powderhound

After 2 months of rebuilding my new toy... originally bought for $500 (drive shaft, tie rods, brakes, water pump, master cylinder, wheels, tires, serp belt, ARB bull bar) I finally got up the nerve to drive it from Denver (where I work) to Crested Butte (where I live... 228 miles away over 4 mountain passes.)

A week prior, I had changed the oil (10w-40) filter, and added the proper dose of Blue Devil engine stop leak hoping to address a small oil leak. I drove it around town for that week, getting it up to temperature/highway speed, making sure everything was in working order in preparation for the big drive.

On the drive, 29 miles in and after sustained climbing, my oil pressure light comes on. Luckily, I was right next to a big parking lot and got off the highway quickly and shut the engine off. I immediately fire up my mobile hotspot and got on here reading threads about how I may have anything from too light weight of an oil, to a broken sensor, to a bad oil pump, to a ruined engine. After sitting and thinking for about 30 minutes, I take a look around, check the oil, check under the truck for leaks or lost fluid. When all seemed well, I decided to turn the truck on momentarily to see if the indicator light was still on. I did not get far enough to see if the oil pressure indicator was on because the engine sounded so bad I immediately shut it back off.

After another half hour of pacing/googling/headaching, I decide that my next course of action would be to drive (I had my wife following me in my VW) to the nearest auto parts store and borrow an oil pressure gauge along with the fixings for a new oil change. The oil pressure gauge was not available, so I went with just the oil change. Got back to the truck, changed the oil, spent 45 minutes looking for the pressure switch that once found, I decided was too inaccessible to remove and test on the side of the road.

Time to test it, turn it on, prepared to turn it immediately back off. It sounds like crap, but immediately starts to get better. After idling for about 30 seconds, it is now sounding pretty good minus what I could only describe as a knock. (I've never stood next to a car that I knew had a knock, and had trouble finding a good youtube on the side of the road to conclusively diagnose.)

After 5 minutes I decide that the truck has started running well enough that I was ready to give it another try. Got on the road and over the next few miles it ran smoother and smoother until by the time I finally reached my destination, I was driving windows down, radio up, loving life because it was driving so unbelievably well.

So, as I was driving I developed a theory based on what I had read on the forums on the side of the road. It's my thought that the blue devil decreased the viscosity of the oil just enough, that it threw the pressure switch just as a very light weight oil (5w-30) has been described to do in other threads. This theory however does not explain why the engine sounded so bad for those few seconds during the initial restart, and then for 30 seconds after the oil change.

Any theories, speculation, anecdotes or whatnot would certainly be appreciated.