I Think I Blew My Engine

I bought my 88 5.0 just a few months ago and just recently started putting miles on it. I didnt realize how quickly it burned oil and started to here a "knocking" sound. I immediately checked the oil and changed it with 5 quarts and changed the filter. I started it back up and the sound seems to be worse and there is major power-loss although i was afraid to get on the gas. I first noticed it yesterday and thought it was maybe the exhaust but it got progressively worse very quickly.

what should i do?

stykthyn said:

yikes. the knock is always a bad thing. I second getting Oil pressure numbers and posting up the specifics about your engine. Mine was losing oil through the valves and I had a horrible rattle when I asked the car to run above 3k rpms.

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mikestang63 said:

The fact it is burning oil is not good. It could be a number of reasons why- valve guides. rings, bearings. bad intake, timing, head gasket, etc. Why did you change the oil? I cannot access the video but as mentioned a knocking sound sounds like your rod/main bearings.

Do you know what your oil pressure was/is? I would first run both the key on engine off and on codes and then the cylinder balance test. If the cylinder balance test comes up with a problem, run a compression/leakdown test.

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i bought my car a few months ago it is an 88' lx 4 cylinder with a 5.0 swap. I dont know what year the engine is from exactly but the guy i bought it from claimed it had 85k miles on the engine. It is mostly stock besides bbk headers , flowmaster exhaust, AC+smog delete.

it turned out the knocking/clicking noise was from the bolts of my headers being loose. the guy i bought it from didnt use loctite when he put the bbk headers on. I just retightened them for now and the noise went away and my car was running normal again. i drove around more today thinking everything was fine then later in the night i noticed again that there was a significant power-loss although the noise was still gone and the bolts were tight. Usually when in 2nd gear around 2500 rpms i never have to give it full throttle to get going really fast. I was flooring it and noticing their wasnt nearly as much pull as usual.

the oil pressure gauge is right in the middle and stays there. Also my check engine light flashes at low rpms like 1000-1200 but goes off if you rev it higher then that, or goes off if its idling. I know the engine doesnt run top-notch to begin with but now i am definitely noticing a major power-loss.

Mikestang63 mentioned balance tests and compression tests, how can i do that and would it help me figure out where my problem is? If not what are some things i should do to try and put my finger on the problem?