had a bad weekend.
i have a reman 360 .040 and a new bulltear timing cover and oil filter adapter without bipass, and a hand lapped oil pump, and a s.s. midplate.
here is the deal;
the engine is full of 10-30, the pickup is 1/2" from the bottom of the pan, i blew through the pickup before i installed it and nothing was blocked. the oil filter was filled before install.
so friday night i tried to prime the new motor, the gears were covered in light oil .. i ran it with my 1/2" drill for about 2 minutes and it would not pump up.. so i pulled the adapter off and tried to re-oil the pump gears with a thicker oil. nada.. so i tried a bit of petroleum jelly and that seemed to do the trick i ran it for about a min and pumped oil up to all the rockers then took a short break.. so about 2 hours later i am ready to fire it up and i hit the drill again to make sure she is all primed up... and nada... i spin the drill for another min or so and nothing,.. the pump lost its prime.. i dont get it...
i figured i better give it a break and check with some pros before i damage something..
the only thing i can even think of is that the oil pump adapter gaskets got somewhat wet from all the assembling and disassembling .. but they were not leaking oil or anything..
when it was primed i was pulling about 17 psi on a manual autometer mechanical gauge.. i watched oil come out of the dist drive gear on the cam.. so at least i know i have that all good to go and hopegfully wont have dist gear problems..
so why would my pump loose a prime in 2 hours.. i dont get it?