I have a 2000 Bonneville with a 3.8 non supercharged engine. My problem is my front valves are ticking and my oil pressure is very low at idle like right above the red line. Now the valves tick at idle and even in higher RPMs. My car has 157k on it. I was wondering what your thoughts were as to what could be the problem (oil pump, lower bearing etc). I am not that inclined to do a valve job on it if thats the problem. This problem has been present on it for about 3 months.

Hi DVALOTO3! Welcome to the Bonneville Forum!

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When was the last time you changed your oil and filter?

How does the oil look? Have you ever had coolant or water in the oil? If so your bearings may be gone. What weight oil are you running?

No mix of coolant in the oil. I just had the coolant flushed before all this happened. I am running 10w30 in it

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas, car continues to run with the above mentioned problems. I did take the valve cover off and notice that the two lifters (drivers side), are causing the noise...they do not have oil going to them @ idle. during higher idle it does finally get oil to those two....others are oiled very well. Any ideas?

Sounds like a heavy case of sludge, yuck! I would suggest a one of a couple of ideas. First option would be to do a flush on the engine. The forum recommends, as well as myself, using the Seafoam engine treatment. This would be something that works pretty fast and could fix the problem in just a few minutes. Just take a can and poor it into your crank case and run the car. Just keep in mind that you don't want to drive the car since this will likely reduce the viscosityof your oil, and then change the oil. I usually just run the car in the driveway so that I can monitor what it'* doing. Some people think that doing such a quick flush can do more harm than good since it can loosen larger chunks of sludge and stop up the oil pump, so it is a bit of a gamble. This would lead to option 2. Look into Auto-Rx here Auto-Rx Engine Cleaner Transmissions Motorcycles Stop Leaky Seals Oil Burning Increase MPG Better Gas Mileage Trouble Shifting ARX It works at a much slower, safer, rate but also does a great job cleaning the engine. I used it on a car that had a leaky rear main about a year ago and it had all but stopped the leak by the time I sold the car. Kinda pricy but worth considering. I currently have some in my 95 silverado with lots of miles on it. I hope this gives you some good ideas, but I think a good (or several) engine flush is what you need.