OK here's the story: I know this mechanic who lets me use one of his bays with a lift and all his tools for what I think is cheap money. I use it for big jobs that I don't want to do in my driveway. and he helps out when I need it. anyways, I just dropped in a ZZ4 and the cars been sitting there for a week beacaue the flywheel I ordered from GMParts Direct was on back order. I asked him to help me tune the carb when the time comes and he got all excited and when I was at work he threw on the flexplate that came with the motor, threw in some of his cheap oil and filter and fired the fricken thing up. Needless to say I was pretty pissed because I had an engine oil primer right there and I told him I was gonna use it, along with some EOS which is comming with the flywheel. needless to say he didn't use it, he just bumped the starter for a minute with the ignition disconnected. said he's done it countless times on new crate motors and never had a problem. He only ran it for less than a minute, didn't get to operating temp. he called me when he started it and put the phone up so I could here it. I don't know what he was thinking, that I would be happy or something. FFS you'd think I'd want to be there when my motor is fired up - not hear it over the phone. So I told him to shut it down - he said the oil pressure was good at 60 psi and everything looked / sounded good. I told him if it spins a bearing he's paying for the re-build....he said sure thing. so anyways, should I prime it when I start it up again? don't know if it's necessary since he already had it running.

 

At this point I think priming is useless. Just run it and don't worry about it. If it spins a bearing, it spins a bearing, nothing to be done now.

Personally, as long as the engine assembled with lube, I think it'll be fine. Don't they run crate motors before they send them out the door anyway?

 

yeah, there was still some oil left in the pan so they definitly ran it before it shipped. but I bought it second hand from a guy who never ended up using it and I just don't know how long it's been sitting ....could have been a year or longer.

 

Either way, it's been run already so priming it won't do you a lick of good. Just don't worry about it, and try to enjoy it.