I have reassembled an engine (383), added 5 quarts of oil and I primed the oil pump with a primer that has a collar to aid in oiling the passenger side rockers. So I use the 3/8" drill, set her clockwise and run it. The pump catches and really slows down and heats up the drill. OK, time to get BIG BIRTHA! Attach the 1/2" and buzz away (clockwise). Again I hear the pump loading down the 1/2" but no oil is flowing from the pushrods at the rockers. I uncapped the front 1/8" pipe plug and oil is making it up there, but not to the rockers. I have 993 heads with Crower 1.5 roller rockers. Any suggestions on why there is no oil gettin' to the rockers? I am rotating the engine as it is being primed.

you are most likely turning engine by hand,will not turn fast enough to allow oil to fill lifters to travel up the pushrod and exit at rocker arm,roller rockers have a small deflector in them so oil will not pass through them squirting the top of valve cover instead they squirt down to the stud area.................

if you don't use a distributor or something to replicate the distributor oil will not flow through the lifter galleys the way it does with a distributor installed, so no oil to the rockers isn't a big deal. priming a SBC is pretty much a waste of time other than making yourself feel better for having done it.

Gee, thanks for such great advice. :lala:

Distributor simulator and primer.



There was a recent post about somebody's engine leaking though a missing pipe plug under the driver's side head. Guess priming the engine on the stand wouldn't have caught that. Easier to catch an oiling problem on the stand than in the car, IMO.


gen3z Thank you for the useful advise. I was wondering if the roller rockers were causing me the grief. First time user of such items (on a Chevy).

no problem, this comes up a good bit. lot of people use a priming tool that's just a straight shaft that engages the oil pump drive shaft. there aren't any oil plugs under the head. there are some from the rear main area and the front and rear of the cam. the ones at the cam are easy to spot but a few of the others are recessed in a drilled hole and if you don't know they're there you'd miss them.

Takes forever to get oil out the rockers. I use and old dist. with the gear ground off and turn it with a socket. Just turn enough to get pressure reading on gauge, real slow will do it. Be patient, it will get there.

I had this same dilemma on my last engine. I used a 1/2" drive drill with a rented primer and like TOM says, oil will get to the rockers. I ran a machanical oil pressure gauge while doing mine and Ihad it up to 60 psi when the oil finally got up there. I poured oil right into the heads all over the rockers before I fired it up.

Do you have any idea how the cam bearings were clocked when they were installed? With some bearing shells, it makes a major difference.

Also, it may take quite a while to get oil flowing through all the lifters to fill the push rods before you see anything at the rockers, especially if the oil is cold and very viscous.

If you have a pressure gauge, you can tap the plug at the front cam journal or simply connect tot he rear oil pressure port to monitor oil pressure while you prime. If you're not developing at least 15 PSIG, you might not see any flow at the rockers.

If you are not developing anything near 10 PSIG, you may have a gallery plug missing.

Add another vote for not worrying about it.... IMHO all this priming is mostly a waste of time, more of a security blanket kind of thing than anything else. If the motor got lubed corrcetly during build-up, it will have all the lube it needs until oil makes its way all the way through the system.

Go visit a car assembly plant some time. You'll notice that they don't prime them, don't hot-lash the valves, don't re-torque the hrad bolts, generally don't do alot of things that you often see in the hobbyist world. If done right in the first place, none of that is necessary.

You guys can crank up dry if you want to....Seen It F*ck up more than one set of cam bearings!! Prime for me all the way!!

screamin i'll bet rb, or me, has seen/built more engines and fired them without preoiling the system without a single problem than you'll ever see. i'd guess if a cam bearing failed it's becasue the installed eithe miss matching up the feed hole or didn't use or used the wrong assembly lube. only time i ever preoil an engine is with an external cooler of filter so the lines and cooler fill with oil. i'd worry more about preoiling after an oil change than after a fresh assembly.

hey ede, look on the deck below where the oil pressure sender unit goes.

where the oil sender goes is isn't under the head, more like the intake china wall. guess it's close enough that we all can say you're right and i'm wrong.

That was too easy...

Lemme describe it better.

Locate the oil sender unit. It is on a plane that is parallel to the bottom of the intake manifold. Now about an inch below that on the drivers side deck there is a square "headed" oil plug. It is below the red RTV. If this plug is left out, one has an oil leak. All I'm saying is that priming the oil pump kills two birds with one stone.

BTW, I did run the engine for a few minutes, popped a valve cover and oil was squirting out the pushrods.

is it me or the pic but does it look like something was bouncing off the top of the #5 piston? Did the spark plug break off or something or am I seeing things?

yep sure looks like something got into the engine. as for the oil plug you're stil lright no matter what you say to try to change my mind i still think you're right.

I borrowed the pic from this thread

banged up piston

Sorry ede, guesss my sarcasm detector was set a little high.

just silly fun on here and you're still right

i know this is an old topic, but this is pretty much what i need to know. i have a 350 (year 2000) which seems to keep on burning up the rod bearings. this is the 3rd time in 25000 miles that this motor has been out of the truck. the last time i put it in after a bottom end rebuild i thought i had it right cuz i was pushing 40-60 lbs of pressure all the time but needless to say i have the motor back on the engine stand. this time i bought a primer and was priming it by sticking the oil pump in a bucket of oil. i have oil at the rockers but it is very minimal (bearly see oil coming out the top of the pushrods). the drill im using is spinning it up pretty fast also. I guess i should mention that the primer does have the piece for the lifter galley to get up to the top also. another thing i noticed is that the last time i rebuilt the motor i pulled the valve cover off after bout a couple months and noticed that it wasnt squirting oil out the pushrods like i thought it should. Should it squirt very far or does anyone have any idea why im not seeing much oil at the top and why i keep burning up bearings in this thing?? btw, the bearings look more worn on the top half compared to the bottom half if that helps. oh, and another thing, this motor always held at least 40 lbs if not 60 lbs of pressure on a mechanical guage the last time it was in the truck.

thanks
mtl

mtl;were all of your bearings worn the same?kind of sounds like a bent crank.might be a perfect time to build that 383!
Eric B

or the holes ain't round, i'd bet having it alighn honed would do it more good

i forgot to mention, all of the rod bearings were copper looking on the top half and the bottom half was definately worn but not as bad as the top half of the bearing. same on the mains just not as bad as the rod bearings. it finally spun #6 rod bearing and that is when it started knocking really bad. almost like it was starved for oil but always had high oil pressure at the guage.

clearly, the problem is that you keep putting it in the wrong kind of vehicle, that 350 belongs in a 3rd gen, not a truck. Duh!

actually, it belongs in a 2000 mastercraft boat!!! LOL

I beg to differ with that comment. There IS an allen plug under the DS head. Mine leaked and forced me to remove the head in order to fix it, so I know.

- Take a look at the pic someone posted above of the engine with a chain on top...now, see where the oil pressure gage/sending unit fitting is?

About two inches in front of that, you can clearly see the plug in reference. Doesn't look like it's under the head surface right? - WRONG. Now actually put the head on, and you'll discover that the corner of the cylinder head covers that plug so there's relly no way to remove it with the head on. When mine leaked around the threads, I almost cried.

Make sure it's sealed nice before you put that head on!!

i think the pic was photo shopped or something ,i've never seen one before

i threw a brand new jasper reman in my 350TPI car not to long ago.. i just unpluged the coil to the distrib n cranked it a few good times .. then fired that sucker up n it shot right up to 60.

k, got it goin been driven it since sunday. my question now is how much oil should be spittn out the top of the pushrods with the valve cover removed at idle?? after running for a couple days and bout 250 miles or so im only seeing a trickle out the top of all the pushrods and this just doesnt seem enough for 45 to 60 lbs at idle.

can someone give me an extimation on how much should be pumpn out of em at idle...please?

Sounds normal to me. I'd be more suspicious if oil was shooting out of the pushrods and 5 ft in the air.

At 250 miles, You'd know it by now if it wasn't getting enough oil in the valvetrain......

Older engines, especially with solid lifters, would shoot oil over the fender just about. Late engines have this oil restricted better so you'll get just a trickle. Nothing wrong there. If you were short on oil to the top the lifters would be pecking.