tensioners?

optionizerSS · Aug 19, 2023

Found a 1996 Cobra SVT that needs work. Says the tensioners are bad but he has new ones but no time or place to fix it. He said he started it and after 10 seconds had no oil pressure so shut it down. The way it read this was related to the tensioners?
know nothing about these 4.6's.

Says car needs tires and brakes as well as paint. Not sure what else but for $6000 I'm thinking it needs more than that. Biggest concern being the oil pressure issue. Says the car has sat for about the last 10 years

07GtS197 · Aug 19, 2023

Sounds like a money pit to me. Oil pressure is created by the pump which is driven directly by the crank with a set of gears. Unless you have 20k to blow I’d pass.

cobrajeff96 · Aug 19, 2023

If the tensioners were bad you'd hear the primary long chains rattling as the motor spins (under combustion). Depends on how they were reading pressure. If it's off the cluster gauge, chance the gauge, the sender, or the wiring in between them (or any combination thereof) is at fault and there is just a false positive. If they had some kind of hydraulic line connected to some point of the system where they read actual fluid pressure with an external gauge, and in fact read zero pressure (especially on cold start when pressure should be somewhat high and definitely observable with such a method) then it's definitely a mechanical fault which should be corrected immediately before attempting to start and run the motor.