Bad news...

The title says it all.  The other week I was driving home from work, everything was hunkey-dorey.  I was almost home, only about a mile away when BAM! just as I was coming to a stop at a traffic light, the oil pressure light came on!  I killed the engine the moment I saw it, then had the car towed home (for free, thanks to AAA!).

A couple of weeks and a bunch of research later, I now have the next big (involuntary!) project on my hands, this is the best I came up with short of pulling the whole darn engine out and rebuilding it (which is something I'm trying to put away until next year):

• Replace oil pressure sending unit
• Replace oil pump
• Replace oil pump driveshaft
  
• Replace connecting rod bearings
• Replace oil pan gasket (one-time use)
• Replace connecting rod bolts (one-time use)
• Replace oil and filter
• Replace rubber gasket on transmission bell housing reinforcement
  

I'm partly done with this now, I have the bearings in, all torqued up with the new bolts and ready to go.  I used Plastigage® to gauge each bearing and was greatly relieved to see that pretty much all the clearances were similar at about 0.038mm, all well within the factory tolerance of 0.030 - 0.070mm.  The old bearings are in terrible shape, I'll post some pictures once I take some.  The oil pressure sending unit is installed and connected as well.  So next time I work on her, I'll be putting in the oil pump and its new shaft, the new oil pan gasket and putting the oil pan back in.  After that, it's just crank her over and hope the oil pressure builds again...  Stay tuned!