What would cause an oil pump to break in half?!?

[Reginald]

Resolution of this thread of mine from a couple of weeks ago.

I ended up giving the auto shop the go ahead to prime and install a new oil pump after all. They found that the old one had literally broke in half.

Somehow, and miraculously – the engine survived this. I thought for sure it was a goner, but they called me this afternoon and said it started up just fine and doesn’t knock or anything, it sounds normal and healthy. No doubt the engine’s life has been shortened by this ordeal, however. I’m picking the car up tomorrow.

Anyway I believe it was the original oil pump from 1984, there were no records of it ever having been replaced by previous owners. It only had 126K miles on it though. Did simple wear and tear do the oil pump in? Or could it have been something else? I’ve done my own oil changes and done everything correctly, never drove it hard. One suspicion I have is that possibly the engine having a long-standing poor idle/low idle problem that I nor anyone else could ever figure out, somehow prematurely wore the pump out or strained it somehow? (The idle problem I’m describing is basically the car would always idle horribly low once warmed up, around 200-300 RPMs although putting it in Neutral or Park would fix it. The car would shake and shudder violently when idling too low) and possibly the poor idle could have messed up the oil pump? I’m just grasping at straws but I want to prevent this from happening again if possible.

Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

Nothing lasts forever ….
Could be a case of tolerance in the components.
A faulty piece of steel.
Abuse from the previous owner.
Lack of maintenance somewhere along the vehicles life.

[Author]

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