L03, all new bearing. Clearances checked and cam bearings oriented properly. No internal gallery plugs removed. Just 3 in front and 3 in back. oil pressure is like 30ish at idle. New lifters. Pushrod oil passages clear. No oil to rockers. When priming with valve covers off I can see oil flowing quite rapidly from the front of lifter valley to back and hear it draining back to pan.

Need opinions. What do ya think? Whats goin on here?

 

Sounds like you're wasting your time "priming" the motor.

Wasting it even more than you would if you had a distributor body, or one of those tools that simulates one, to complete the right bank lifter passage, so the engine has about a 3/8" diameter HOLE aka LEAK from the pressurized system.

 

You need a special priming tool that has a seal at the lifter valley floor. Dont bother. Just move on with your build. If you really want to "prime" it, as long as you dont have a flat tappet cam, (you shouldnt!) just remove all teh spark plugs and turn it over with the starter for a few seconds. Should be all you need and no real load was put on anything since it didn't build compression. (Note remove ignition power also so that you dont stress the ignition system too hard while doing this)

You can do this with a flat tappet too, but with those it's super critical to get the thing moving at 2000-3000 RPM as soon as possible. You dont want to be wasting any more time just turning the engine over than you have to.

 

Source of issue found. Front plugs behind cam gear. Thanks for suggestions.

 

Getting oil up top now... curious on 2 things. 1... can oil sender register pressure to stock gauge without battery power to it? 2... is too high a pressure bad?

 

1. The stock gauge will not register pressure without electrical power to it. You can use a mechanical gauge instead.
2. I don't think high pressure is bad, but it might not be desireable. I don't know where the threshold of "too much pressure is bad" is.

 

Odd with power not hooked up it still registered some type of pressure, though clearly not the correct one. I have a mech gauge hence my confusion on which gauge was correct cause the mech gauge was pegged at 100PSI... Either way, got a different mech gauge and now I'm where I need to be I guess as both the cluster and mech gauge are in synch. Initial start/cold idle I'm at about 78 PSI i think it was or 70 PSI. One of those. LOL. Never got opportunity to full warm up as my stupid fan is kicking on again at like 165-170 while I have a 180 stat. First stat got stuck open, hope this one isn't stuck as well. Though it exhibits same symptoms as the first one that got stuck open. Though around 165-170ish temps the pressure registered at like 55 PSI or so. At least I FINALLY have oil up top. Thanks for the replies.