Thanks Larry. Yes the slinger is in there although I dont usually use them on Rover engines. The balancer just touches where the oil pan bolt holes are reinforced on the front of the cover. I'll grind a few thou off the front cover and that should see it clear.
Primed the oil pump this morning and got good oil flow at all the rockers, it was pouring out of the push rods, even managed to spurt across the workshop a few feet Then I noticed the oil pressure gauge was up around 95psi. Pump is the TA high flow billet oil pump Twin remote filters 0w30 synthetic oil Main bearing clearances were all 0.002" through to 0.0025" Engine turns over easily with a ratchet handle. Even slackening the by-pass I can only get it down to 82psi This could be just because the oil is cold. I'm measuring the pressure at the remote filter manifold, on the left in the picture below. This is after the oil has passed through the filters. Any thoughts? A friend of mine suggested that it could be the Graphogen I used on the main bearings that is restricting oil flow, or having the effect of reducing the bearing clearances. Update: I disconnected the swivel joint from the by-pass connector and spun the oil pump. I got a good flow from the by-pass so that shows it is opening. I still had 82psi on the gauge. I'm going to take the feed off the rear of the passenger side (your passenger side) lifter gallery and see what I get there.
The oil is cold and you are spinning it with a drill. In the engine, the oil pump turns at 1/2 the crank speed.
Hi Larry, you confirm my first thoughts. Good to get a second opinion. Just as a matter of interest I was reading a piece by JW regarding an oil feed to the passenger lifter gallery. At this stage of my build it would be easy to run a Tee from the filter outlet round to the passenger lifter gallery. According to Jim it not only improves flow to the important stuff but also takes a bit of the strain off the pump and hence off the cam gear as well. It's about $100 worth of AN fittings and pipe, is it worth it or not?
Jim installed that on my current motor. My motor made 602 HP, with no girdle. Jim thought it a good idea. Up to you.
Parts have been ordered. @LARRY70GS I noticed you have an AED 1000 listed in your signature. I'd be interested to know your opinion of it as I have the AED 850HO - Annular.
It is consistently 1 1/2-2 10 tenths and 2 MPH faster in the 1/4 mile. The quadrajet is way more economical though, so I run it on the street and the AED at the track.
OK, this is a first for me. I was filling the engine with coolant this afternoon and noted I had a slight leak. It looked like a core plug (freeze plug) was leaking. I was pretty disappointed given they're all new and I gave them all a liberal smear of RTV when fitting them. So I stopped filling the engine and had a closer look. I was astonished to see that the core plug is fine and the leak is in fact coming out of the header bolt hole just above it.
My first though was whether you drilled for the extra 4 head bolts/studs, but I see that is not the case. Looks like the center header bolt hole? What head gasket did you use?
Correct, it's the passenger side center header bolt hole. I used the TA Performance MLS gaskets. Gives me a feeling that TA have drilled the hole too deep and clipped a water passage. The question I'm trying to answer is can I still use the head.
If that is the case, I would install a short allen head plug with sealer, then use a shorter bolt or stud in that position if necessary.
Larry, we are on the same page. That's exactly what I'm looking at doing. I might even use a stainless stud and some epoxy resin.
BBMOPAR engines have the exhaust bolts into coolant, just use sealer on the bolt you are going to use and it'll be fine.
Sealer or anti-seize. Either one would likely be fine. I'd be far more concerned about RTV silicone on core plugs scares me. Silicone is slippery. The last thing you want is to have a core plug slide out under pressure. The core plug I can see best in the photo looks to be A) Brass, and B) not real deep. Both characteristics can lead to insufficient friction to retain the plug. Brass plugs don't have the radial strength that steel plugs have, and narrow plugs have less surface area on the block to develop friction. Hey, you may be fine. "I" would verify with a pressure tester and a hot engine block. Make sure they hold more pressure than the rad cap can develop. I used to use epoxy to seal core plugs, but I've moved-on to "threadlocker" such as Loctite 271, or equivalent/similar.
Nothing about RTV is going to see the core plugs slide out under pressure. The radiator cap I'm using opens at 12psi which means even the larger of the core pugs will see no more than 29 pounds across its total surface area. If they were going to come out at 29 pounds I could have fitted them by hand. In addition the brass plugs were about 0.006" greater in diameter than the steel ones, possibly this is the manufacturers way of ensuring they are at least as tight a fit as the steel ones. I do know it took a 3lbs copper mallet to put them in. Anyhow, they didn't pop out this afternoon when I broke the cam in. I was going to post a video but the sound quality is terrible. So I'm now the proud owner of a running 455
This is something I'll never get tired of and can never seem to get enough of... The smell of an engine running for the first time after being apart/rebuilt! The way the paint cooks in plus the mix of gas and a little oil being burned off is to me such a great aroma. Maybe it doesn't really smell that good but what it signifies is usually the culmination of a long and sometimes bumpy road, and that's always good! Congrats Rossco!!
@Philip66 thank you. I agree there is something about the smell of a newly built engine running for the first time. Now I just need to build the TH400 to go with it. As a side note followers of this thread may recall I had oil pressure of 95psi when I primed the oil pump. Having plumbed in a second oil feed to the rear of the passenger side lifter gallery the oil pressure dropped to 75psi cold and sat at 65psi (2000rpm) when hot. I'm getting a lot of flow through the oil by-pass which is ok as it is now plumbed into the fuel pump attachment point on the timing cover. It's spraying a lot of oil onto the timing chain etc which I guess can only be a good thing. Oil temp remained constant at around 100c (212F)
