Broken oil pump gear

Ive just dropped an oil pan on a 12cyl Detroit that had lost oil pressure and locked up to find the oil pump gear had broken . Is this a common fault or just metal fatigue and old age with thousands of hours ? The main and bigend bearings had picked up and the oil filter I cut open and it was full of filings . Any ideas ?

12V 71? These gears are known for wearing. Third paragraph under oil pump heading, section 4, in the shop manual says "keep the oil changed and acid free" to minimize the wear.

However, if I came across one that had broken gears, I would be looking for blockages in the gallery and a stuck pressure relief valve.

Sounds like this one is super duper hours or really bad maintenance or both.

And, it broke HARD!

But, as long as the block measures out, she can live again with enough parts thrown at it. And there are plenty of parts still around.

Thanks for the reply , yes she has very high hours and is badly maintained . I pulled the bearing caps to find the shells are loose in the caps , these guys wanna do a patch job to keep it rolling . There are not a lot of new parts around for the old girls anymore

Oh there are plenty of parts available if you know where to look. It's been a while since I dove that deep into one so my contacts have become "lost". But, I do searches all the time for this forum and run across lots of listings for kits, injectors and misc. I don't recall seeing crankshafts lately but there have to be some around. Is that what you need?

It's just that they don't make blocks or heads anymore and much of the "piles" of used I used to pick through to piece the old Terex scrapers back together are dwindling fast.

Good luck and let us know how you make out.