I recently replaced my oil pump because one of the teeth broke off of it. I started the car with the valve cover off and Im not getting any oil flow through the pushrods. I pulled the oil pressure sender out and Im gettind oil pressure out of that. So why isnt it getting to the top end? Car will also not idle. Probably because of collapsed lifters. Please help!

1987 350 TPI

 

i guess the next step would be to get a primer and try that. When the car is idleing, is oil supposed to squirt out of the pushrods a lot?

 

Not necessarily. I wouldn't

Lifters don't "collapse". That's the word people use when they don't know what's really going on. Once in a rare occasional while the check valve or its seat gets dirty, and the oil chamber won't hold pressure; but that can be fixed with some transmission fluid in the oil. And even if they did "collapse", which I can only assume would mean that they fail to retain their little reservoir of oil, then all that would happen is that the valve would open late and close early and lose some lift; it would be like shrinking down the cam. It wouldn't prevent the car from running.

But, there's no particular reason to expect oil to come out of the push rods and rockers all the time. If the hole in the tip of the rocker doesn't happen to exactly line up with the hole in the top of the push rod, it won't squirt; but oil will still get up there and lube everything.

When you say "it won't idle", what does it do instead?

Oil pump teeth don't just "break off". the only thing that will cause that is debris in the oil, which is not generally considered a good thing. Do you know what caused this to happen? Is the debris still there? What was it? How did you know that a tooth had "broken off" of an oil pump gear?

 

the car will start up and run anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds before stalling. I was driving it last year when I lost oil pressure. I turned the car off and had it towed home. I pulled the distributer out and shined a flashlight down there, I noticed that there was a tooth missing from the oil pump. When I pulled the pump out, one tooth was broken completly off, and the other one was bent and cracked. I also found the nylon sleeve at the bottom of the pan. The only thing I can think os that the sleeve broke off and caused the shaft to slide around and break the pump teeth. I would still think that I should be getting some oil flow when the car is idleing.

?????

 

Also, I had the car running for about 10 minutes before I took the valve covers off. This is when I noticed the ratteling from the rockers. If I wasnt getting oil up there, wouldnt it have caused a lot of damage and be bone dry up there? When I ran the car without the valve covers on, there was oil residue up there, I just didnt see any movement.

 

Ohhh you mean the two ears on the oil pump SHAFT!!... Are you sure your timing is where's suppsed to be ?

 

The car ran good for about 7,000 to 10,000 miles before the shaft on the pump broke. Can that cause this?

 

OK so the problem wasn't oil pump "teeth", which are inside the pump; you're talking about just the drive shaft parts.

In that case, you're right, the nylon thing just broke, and the intermediate shaft wobbled around on top of the pump gear shaft, and it ate itself. Happens all the time. I hope you put a shaft with a metal sleeve back in it; I sure won't ever put a plastic one back in there.

Your idling problem is probably not related to oil. I'd be more inclined to suspect a vacuum leak.

 

yeah, I used a ARP shaft with the steel sleeve. Im hoping the the rough idle is either a vacuum leak or just the old gas. What about the oil coming through the pushrods though? I wouldnt think I would see some flow at idle, wouldnt I?

 

Not necessarily. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

UPDATE:

Im glad I used my own judgement. I replaced the lifters and now Im getting a lot of flow through the pushrods. My old lifters no longer had any bounce to them.