Its officially done.
Let a diesel fuel and transmission fluid mixture sit in it and manually turned the engine over a few times over the weekend in hopes to knock some sludge loose. When I drained it I saw no debris in in, added new oil and filter, started it up and oil pressure jumped to 20psi idle right away (my heart was racing), then steadily dropped back down to 4 once it warmed up a bit. Major blockage and or a bearing/tolerance failure. Sad day, but I have a local buyer for it already, and am stealing all of the fun parts off of it for another NBS project one day.
I know how cheap (by comparison) a swap would be, but I don't have the room/tooling/time to do it myself. With no spare car to drive in the meantime, and the lady fed up with it, we went out and bought a very nice used 2015 Yukon SLT. Hate to give up on this one - doesn't sit totally right with the mechanic in me - but its just how it went this time around. Best believe I'll be pulling a valve cover ASAP on the new Yukon to verify its been well cared for.
/thread...
