deadeyejedi

ive been working on my low budget olds 350 and im at the point of prepriming the lifters and push rods .so far ive managed to make a mess of the shop floor but don't have oil coming through all of the push rods yet. i have a couple of questions: (1)how long should spinning this drill in reverse take to get oil flowing? it only seemed like a couple minutes with my 455 and another 350 i was working on.(2)is it normal to have oil gushing up out of the lifter bores?and lastly(3)i have one pushrod that squirts oil like crazy is this normal since many of the others are not squirting yet? . im going to get a 1/2 inch drill at work today as my battery powered drill only lasts 4 or 5 minutes before dying. i am reusing all the lifters so i cleaned them all up and they look real good.the pushrods are all new with no obstructions.i did not soak all the lifters in oil(should i ?)as always thanks .

oldcutlass

Try turning the engine a quarter turn every few minutes.

cdrod

I did what Eric suggested; I rotated the crank 1/4 turn then primed for a few minutes and repeated this until saw oil at the rockers. Using a corded 1/2" drill motor is definitely the best tool for the job. My cordless drill could barely turn the oil pump!

Rodney

deadeyejedi

I guess i need to step back a bit . i tried priming with the 1/2 inch drill when i got home from work and nothing really changed. i have some lifters mostly on the left side pushing oil really well but most of them still dry. i pulled two out from the right side of the block and replaced then with a couple from another motor that i knew worked well when i took them out and didn't get any oil up the pushrods with those either.i did try turning the motor over a little at a time but no change.So, i decided to see what would happen with no lifters in the 2 bores to make sure the oil was getting that far and all hell broke loose! as soon as i touched that drill i got 2 streams of oil that shot straight to a 12 foot ceiling and covered me the motor and several other items in oil .I would say the pump is working good !!! Note to others if you try that make sure you're ready!! Im going to install one valve cover and work on one side at a time to avoid excess oil everywhere.all in all i ran the drill for about 10 minutes should be more than enough to get oil flowing . ive never had this issue before even with brand new lifters without soaking they pumped up right away. if i have no luck over the next few days ill say **** it and buy some new lifters.

Sugar Bear

Is the oil galley plug with an orifice by the distributor in place? Are the oil galley plugs by the timing chain one with an orifice and one without an orifice in place?

Good luck!!!

deadeyejedi

yes all in place and cleaned.

deadeyejedi

I got the drivers side valve cover on this morning that cuts down on the oil on the floor. Running the drill for a solid 5 minutes no measurable oil coming out the pushrods on the passenger side, still plenty of oil oozing up the lifter bores which would indicate to me some form of blockage ive pulled a couple of lifters and disassembled them and they look pretty clean to me. any other suggestions?

67OAI

Are you turning the crankshaft as mentioned in post #2? At any given position of the crankshaft, some lifters will be indexed to their respective oil supply port, others will not!

deadeyejedi

yes I have turned the engine to about 6 different positions and always oil at the same pushrods and none at a lot of them . I have some pushrods soaking in oil now I’ll go back to it in a day or two.I’m also going get a helper to turn the engine by hand so I can look closely at the lifters to see if they are in fact spinning

70W-32

Pretty obvious that the lifters are the issue. Id be replacing them with a set of new ones of good quality. (maybe contact Mark Remmel)

deadeyejedi

I have a low budget on this motor so I’m trying to work with what I have . I did make some progress .soaking a couple lifters in oil overnight and got oil coming up through the pushrods now.I’ll do that with all the ones I had trouble with it seemed to do the trick. I think when you got to the extent of cleaning I did on these soaking in oil is a must.

70W-32

Did you disassemble the lifter for cleaning? Are they re-assembled correctly?(the disc in the right orientation?)
Are these lifters from this cam?

deadeyejedi

yes original cam and lifters all put back in where they came from . I only removed the little retainer and cup and use carb and choke cleaner to spray them out followed by compressed air . That’s as far as I dared to go .It’s a challenge keeping track of where everything goes.I think I’m on the right track now.we’ll see over the next few days . If I’m not happy then I’ll replace the lifters with new ones.

Sugar Bear

If the lifters aren't worn out on the bottom and you disassembled and cleaned them they should be fine...been there done that with great results.

Good luck!!!