Quote:
Originally Posted by slowmover
Ah, yes, the storied history of the Lordstown plant.
Home of the Chevrolet Vega and it’s Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time aluminum engine.
Where, “stopping to fill up”, meant oil, not gasoline.
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I had one of them Vegas, given to me by a family member.
It ran OK with no problems until one day with about 25K on the clock. On that day I was coming back from a hunting trip and I happened to look down at my aftermarket Stewart Warner oil pressure gauge as I was turning a corner, and the instrument announced with a needle-diving-to-zero that I had approaching-zero oil pressure!
Well, that was kind of interesting, so as I was preparing to pull to a stop after straightening out on the other side of the turn, the oil pressure went back up to a normal 25 or 30 psi level. Now, ain't that something.
Well, I continued on the way home but I kept my eye of that faithful SW gauge all the way there and, sure enough, it was telling me that the oil pressure fell as I made sharp turns but came back after straightening out again.
When I got home, I lifted the hood to see what was going on and found that the oil in my pan had dropped to well below the "add" mark on the sounding stick. First time I saw that happen. But not the last.
From that day forward that little aluminum-with-silicon-mix-block with the who-needs-sissy-cylinders-liners? design burned oil. Like, smoke signal level. I could blow smoke rings around tailgating traffic by clever use of the ignition key.
I didn't keep the Vega very long after it got old enough to smoke. I guess 25000 miles wasn't too bad, considering.