Hi guys. I have a 1994 Buick Park Avenue 3.8L First Series. The car had been sitting in the drive way for a year and hadn't been turned on. About a month ago I bought it out of retirement. It needed a new tire and a new battery and that was it. Started right up. I got the oil changed, put some STP in the gas tank and filled the tank up. I got the oil changed 2 weeks ago. I was running an errand today and it started making this terrible knocking noise. The dashboard said there was so NO oil at all in the engine. I pulled over and checked the oil and it was full. I drove it back home since I was about 5 mins away. Now the car won't even start. My neighbors insist its an oil problem. The engine sounds as if it's not getting oil. My neighbor thinks that the fuse that controls the oil is blown. I don't know where to find this fuse or what number it could be. Does anyone know the number and the location so I can check for myself? If it's premature to think that its a fuse that is causing this, what else could it be? Thanks for the help...

BTW: This car has 60,000 miles. Plugs and wires are good.

After something's been sitting for a year, it's really anybody's guess.

maybe the oil pump got clogged, that would cause no oil pressure and kill an engine pretty quickly

or they put the wrong "oil" in it.

Edited May 20, 200817 yr by loki

The dashboard doesn't tell you how much oil you have. It only tells you how much oil pressure you have. What you're describing sounds like an oil pressure issue. Almost every oil pump I've heard of is mechanical and driven by the crankshaft. It could've seized from sitting, or something plugged it. Either way, you now likely have something seriously wrong with the rotating assembly.

Drain your oil. If you see silver shavings in the drain bucket, don't bother troubleshooting any further. You've ground your bearings and need to either overhaul your engine or get another one.

3.8L engines have the oil pump driven directly off the end of the crankshaft at the timing cover, the oil pump is actually mounted in the timing cover, so you can't techinally "replace" it, you can however rebuild it. It sounds to me like the engine is starving for oil on the top end (hence the ticking/clacking sound) and now you've possible locked the engine up, since the bottom end (rod bearings, main bearings) are lubricated from the crankshaft actually splashing down into the oil in the oil pan.