Hi

I have my Fiesta s1600 2011 in the garage at the moment due to a low oil pressure light that came on near the end of a long journey 3 weeks back.

Context: 3 hour drive to a festival. Car was cruising along fine. Got into the car park queue which was stop start and the engine low oil pressure light came on. Turned the engine off for a bit while waiting and then turned the ignition back on when I got again and gave it a slight rev to get everything flowing, as up until that point the car was operating fine and the engine sounded fine. 

Some minutes later the temperature light came on and managed to get parked up about 5 minutes later. Popped the hood and noticed the coolant was boiling/bubbling away (Not a good sign). Once the engine cooled off I checked my oil level and realised it was near empty. Quite the surprise as a couple days prior it was at a good level. So must have thinned out and leaked during the 3 hour journey.

Topped the oil up straight away and turned the car on the day before I was due to drive back and revved it a bit. No oil light came on at this point. I thought brilliant, must have been low oil.

For the journey back I was going to do hour legs and let the engine cool off / settle with the aim of getting it to the garage to be looked at. However, 10 minutes into the 20 minute journey to the nearby halfords (To pick extra oil and coolant up) the engine low oil pressure light came on again. 

Queue a 10 hour recovery back to my local towns garage, my mechanic has taken a look today and only told me so far 'it's not looking good, i'll confirm later'

From people's experience, how bad do you think this is? Am I looking at a costly repair or worse here? The car runs fine and the engine doesn't sound bad either. But just need to know whether to brace for a costly repair.

Cheers all.

Dan.

If it's high mileage it could be burning oil and burnt it all off.

I once had a 1981 Mini 1100 that did 30 MPG (of oil)