Hi Gang, The big day is almost here, The basket case is
almost back together! I think I am
ready to fire up the rebuild 427. I get no oil pressure
reading when running the oil pump with a cordless drill.
Is this correct or am I doing something wrong? Do I need
to bleed the oil line to the gauge? Thanks! Bruce

you might want to pull the pan and see if the pick up tube is touching the pan this can cause there to be no oil pressure. Are there performance goodies on the motor, some of them may not be aligning properly.

Hi, Bruce. The PVC system will allow the gauge line to stabilize.

Am I missing something here? Have you tried spinning the pump the opposite direction?

John

|UPDATED|5/10/2004 6:58:49 PM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

be very very very sure you have the rear cam bearing installed properly..

I bought my current car from a guy who had the engine rebuilt at a shop in MO, they installed the rear cam bearing wrong. the car wouldnt oil the top end of the engine... i would up buying it knowing something was wrong but not quite what as I didnt pull the valve covers to check for oiling when I bought it. 478 miles after the rebuild it needed a new valve job..

i just gone done putting my engine back in saturday...

be sure you can see oil "dribbling" out of the push rods into the rockers arm before you go any further..

youll have to turn the crank to make sure you get all of the lifters into a rest state at some point and make sure they are all oiling.

you also want to make sure the oil pickup is tacked on to the pickup tube as the pickup on chevy oil pumps have a tendency to fall off..

lumberjack said: Hi, Bruce. The PVC system will allow the gauge line to stabilize. John

I assume you mean PCV (positive crankcase ventilation)

These guys are giving good advice, I also had some oil issues with my 427. Mine's an L-71. I used a NOS 435 h.p. cam and the correct edge orifice lifters. Those solid lifters don't put a lot of oil up top and while priming we had a couple that just would not oil.All it turned out to be was a bit of pre-lube in the ends of the rods. The worst problem was the priming rod wasn't made properly and rubbed on the block and put some shavings in the system. Just rotating the motor by hand damaged a couple of bearings and obviously the crank had some score marks on it.
A complete tear down was necessary, new bearings and polish the crank. Needless to say I was sick!
Is it possible your cordless drill isn't spinning fast enough?

cthulhu said:   lumberjack said: Hi, Bruce. The PVC system will allow the gauge line to stabilize. John   I assume you mean PCV (positive crankcase ventilation)

Yeah, meant that's I what. (it's a bird, it's a plane, it's DyslexiaMan)

John

You should see some pressure. You should be turning clock wise. On my 350, it took me a while to figure out that the right side would not oil with out using a 'distributor' type oiler. One of these cheap straight rod types does not have the oil channel required for the right side.