So I've put about 250-300 miles on the 455 since the install, was a running 74 455 with 70k ish miles, no knocks, no smoke and oil was dirty when I pulled dipstick but no metallic in it. I did new melling oil pump, primes it with drill, had oil come out every rocker arm, new water pump, new fuel pump, new gaskets, notched valve covers, non erg intake, w&z manifolds, rebuilt the rochester and new paint before install, fired up great, ran it to get to normal temperature then set timing, did a few carb adjustments and all seemed well, car consistently had 50psi oil pressure at start up and hung about 30psi hot and idling in drive at a stop light, somewhere between 250-300 trouble free miles, yesterday out on a cruise on the highway about 70mph oil pressure drops to 0 and in the 15 seconds it took to get pulled off the side of the highway was enough time to give it a pretty good rattle. Called my buddy to come get me with the trailer and when I got it home I pulled the dipstick, the oil is blackest oil I've ever seen and has a pretty gold metal flake in it. Lol. I guessing there was an oil pump failure and I'm going to be getting into some bottom end work

 

I wonder if your pickup tube fell off?

 

Tube was set 3/8" off pan bottom and tach welded on

 

Tack welds can break easily from vibration. Weld it fully for a better job or make a tab that connects from the pick up head to a bolt on the pump cover. It might be a little over kill but it's cheap insurance

 

If it is a "pump" failure, it might be the pump driveshaft. Might be spinning in the distributor gear.

But don't rule out a bad bearing or somesuch. You're not going to do much damage running an engine for only 15 seconds without oil pressure. The damage may have come before the loss of pressure.

 

Bearings were going south. I am also wary of tack welds on the pick up tube. I have bolt on tubes on all my engines i use in my cars. My buddy lost a engine when a tube fell off.I am sorry the op had problems.

 

Happened to me.

Pick up fell off and the resulting damage was a complete rebuild.

Good lock!

 

A buddy had it happen on a sbc in his 29 roadster, luckily no damage. An easy fix on the roadster as nothing in the way to drop the pan.

 

Well after a few week break from the car I am going to start pulling the motor later this week, i'll get it out and apart and let you know what I find, I did buy a short block yesterday, supposed 20k on rebuild for $300. Crank was cut .010 and cylinders .020, the # on the pad is 30M306406 so if I've done my homework it's a 70

 

Good luck with the new motor. Let us know what u find with the 74 motor

 

Thanks, i'll hopefully get to it this week, the last week and a half here has been upper 80's and humid, thats not my favorite working weather