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X, I'm not so sure about your source for oil pressure. Pull one valve cover off, and then prime your engine with your drill. Look for oil squrting from around the lifters. The drill should start going easy and then quickly bog down as it starts to pump oil. If no oil is present, what kind of oil pan do you have? Is it stock or aftermarket? Pulling the pan is no big deal. After you pull the pan, make sure you have a pickup, and if you do, grab it and make sure it's tight. Next, I would put a piece of duct tape over the pickup and then get some clay and put about a 1" ball on the tape. Then reinstall your pan properly, and then remove it and check the clay making sure it is 1/4" thick,(a little thicker is OK, but not thinner). If it's smashed to nothing, there's your problem. If it's OK, I would pull the pump and have that checked out.
Good luck...
Tim

Running the 9 psi fuel pressure could have been washing down the cylinder walls on top of no oil splash on the walls.

Would the time it was run under these conditions been enough to damage the rings to ?

The 9psi would only be hard on the carb, the carb would have had to have flooded to wash the cylinders. X, 7psi max.

As mentioned, inspect the oil for metal; but do it by cutting the filter open. Any metal in the oil should be cleaned from the oil by the filter before being passed to the bearings, but if you have no oil pressure or filing in the filter, plan on disassembly. Contact your engine builder.

I just pulled off the valve covers and re-drilled again. All of the lifters are saturated with oil, inside of the valve cover completely splashed with fresh oil as well. Quite possibly in my excitement that the engine started, when I was not looking at the gauges, I had pressure, but then checked the gauges again once I seen everything get very hot, but who knows. What is for certain is that they got fresh lubricant somehow. But it was not from what I did today or now, again the drill failed to prime the oil pump, but at some time something was giving it oil recently. I will pull the oil pan off tomorrow night and examine the oil pump.

Tim; After market pan by the way; Proformance. I guess what you are saying with the pickup is the pickup has to have clearance between the pan itself and the feed end of the pickup? Is that the point you are making? I will give that a try to make certain the clearance is there, but I have a heavy suspision that when I take off that pan tomorrow night that it is going to be completely obvious what is hanging the pump up. I mean, when I am using the drill (1/2" electric) it is really bogging down, then it stays at a heavy load as if something was really hanging it up.

Edelbrock states 5.5psi max in their manual on the web. No reason to go any higher, so they say. Min. is 4psi by the way. At either rate it is the least of my worries and the fuel pressure will start much lower if I get another chance.

X, yes, the pickup must have proper clearance between it and the pan. This does happen now and then and is not uncommon. Without proper clearance, you won't get pressure,(or only a little). It's good that your drill is bogging down during the priming process. It's hard work for a drill to turn an oil pump, it will burn up a cheap drill in a heartbeat.
good luck,
Tim

A bogged down drill is a good sign. And you have fresh oil in the heads. I think your gauge or gauge pressure source might be to blame.

With the removal and install of the distributor did you adjust the timing?

I had the same oil priming problem in a 4-cyl: purchased a built engine, installed it and had no oil pressure, tried everything to get it primed, when I dropped the pan I found a flat piece of thin plywood in the pan. It was getting suck onto the oil pick-up, and no oil was getting thru. the pain was troubleshooting it (as I'm sure you now know :)).
I still can't figure out how the wood sank.

I happy to hear you have oil up top (read: you can now take one step back from the edge of the cliff).

Update; Oil pressure problem fixed.

Taking off the valve cover led me to question how the oil got up underneath the valve covers if I never once had pressure and I went back to the series of events that took place before the initial start.

I originally (before starting) primed the engine with a drill, for a 10 minutes looking for leaks and other things I am doing it, but never checked for pressure because I noticed a leak coming from my -AN fitting off of the remote oil filter bracket. It had a harline crack in the bulk fitting. I went to replace it, but I had to remove both NPT fittings to do so. When I placed the hoses back on, after replacing the -AN fitting, I put them on back wards (inlet was outlet and vise versa); thus no pressure. Engine builder recommended that I look at that closely, because the odds of not being able to prime a oil pump they thought are in the millions, even after a year of sitting. They were more upset about my problem than I was, or close to it.

As soon as I swaped them last night; boom 60 to 70 PSI of oil pressure with the drill. Embarassing but at least it is fixed. Now on to the rough start problem next. Could not start it last night in fear that I would have the police on me once I wake up the entire neighborhood.

I had a heavy ground wire running from the block to the frame, but I am going to replace it with a heavy gauge battery wire with pressed ends, 4ga I think. I do not believe the distributor cap was sitting flush on the distributor, it seemed to be sitting on the rim of it on the back.

So you have ran the engine with the oil lines reversed?

the glowing headers was likely caused by your timing being retarded too much, not giving enough time to finish burning and the flame was going thru the open exhaust valve and out into the header.

Have you checked the filter for metal bits? If you ran it with the hoses reversed you probably had no oil flow at all. This is not good unfortunately.

Good question. What would happen under this scenario? Whouldn't the oil just bypass the filter?

Like others have said, headers are glowing because of too much fuel. ie over rich carb and or too little timing

The oil will not flow through the filter in reverse. Normally the oil flows out of the pump/block into the outer perimeter slots, into the filter canister through the filter media towards the center of the canister and then out the hole in the center of the filter and into the main oil galleys to be distributed throughout the engine. The silicone rubber flapper valve that lies behind each of the slots is specifically designed to prevent oil from flowing in reverse.

This whole deal scares me and worries me everytime I send an engine out. Good luck

Yeah, but your engines are dyno tested and proven to have oil pressure/be in tune/be in time when they leave your place.

What happens after it leaves your shop isn't necessarily in your control. Simple things like plumbing an oil cooler/remote filter in backwards isn't your fault but could totally cook an engine.

Hey, shouldn't you be in Orlando takin it easy?

Don't forget, Daytona Beach isn't but 1.5 hours away.....and Cocoa beach isn't far either.

Yes, but as previously shown in this site, a vendor needs to make sure it survives. It is good business. I think Keith is right in his apprehension of the abilities of anyone after they receive one of his components.

What if someone buys a complete engine from him, drains the oil out of it, and starts it?

Most definitely he needs to be apprehensive about the design, assembly, and reliability of his engines.

Most definitely not does he need to worry about people that don't know a spark plug from their pee-tom.

(BTW, I'm not inferring that the originator of this post is in this category...just making an example.)

Xavier: What's the latest on your engine? Been following this with great interest, as I'll be doing my first run in about 3 months. Have you dropped the pan or cut open the oil filter yet? Inquiring minds want to know...

Good luck, Dude.
DD

Xavier,

Do yourself a favor and pull your engine and replace all your bearings now. My guess, your rings are fine but take a good look at your crank to see if you have any bluing or dark areas where your rods connect. If so have your crank turned and polished. This is a cheap pre-caution at this point. Given the heat your engine obtained I would certainly do this.

Cherry Picker $50 rental
Main Bearings $60
Rod Bearings $60
Machine Crank $100
Gaskets $120
Engine Stand $100

Feeling that your engine is not going to seize up in 50 miles ... PRICELESS!!

Clois