'97 5.7 Vortec Low Oil Pressure

[RawbDidIt]

I put some seafoam in the crankcase and that actually significantly quieted the lifter noise. The gauge on the cluster reads about 10 PSI at warm idle occasionally but most of the time it stays stuck at zero. I find it hard to believe that it's zero that frequently for the truck to run as well as it does. Can the mechanical gauge be hooked up without removing the distributor?

If you're talking about on your vortec 5.7l, yes. Here's where you'll find it. It's hard to find, but relatively easy to get the gage in one you know exactly where it's at.

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[Jacob Hendrix]

I thought I'd close-out this discussion here by explaining how I was able to fix my truck. What fixed my problem was replacing the oil pump, pickup tube (both melling), changing the oil filter, and the oil.

I'm not sure if this could've caused the issue, but my father took the truck to have tires and an oil change a while back, and they used one of those awful FRAM oil filters. I replaced it with AC Delco.

Nonetheless, this appears to have fixed my issue. Not only do I have excellent oil pressure again, the valvetrain knocking sound is gone too!

I hope this helps someone out in the future, and thanks again to everyone who has given input here!