CAN I If I put together a engine on a stand minus the intake and plugs.Pre oil it with a drill and than slap dist in it.Bolt a 1/2" drill to the crank bolt and spin the motor till I have oil circulating in the vital areas.Than put in car and run and break in as normal. Any Pros Or Cons.
Probably not the best way I'm no expert, but I think you might be better off to pre-oil after the motor is in the car by pulling the distributor. Part of the point of doing this is to get oil to vital areas (bearings, rings, etc) without actually moving those pieces. It's easy to do and you'd be better off. :TU: I also think you'd have trouble using a half inch drill and turning the entire rotating assembly. Sounds kinda unwieldy.
Here is a pretty good thread on how to pre-oil. I used a 1/2" diameter/long shafted wood boring bit from Home Depot and cut the sharp point off with a cut-off wheel in a dremel. Worked great with a socket over the end of it.
I took an old 455 points distributer and gutted it to the shaft. Once you have the bare shaft, you can put it into a drill and pre oil your motor on the stand.
I don't think you are going to find a 1/2 inch drill that will spin the engine over from the crank sahft bolt. You can easily prime the pump with a drill , the intake can be on it. This will get oil to all the places it needs to be. Jim Burek P.A.E. Enterprises
HOW about if I bolt the on the flexplate&starter and use a battery for juice. I'm just trying to get away from having to tear it apart after its in the car for some Buick related failure. I wouldn't actually torque the heads down.They would be just bolted down on the block for lifter priming and pressure against the cam bearings.
If you did that, it would turn the complete motor over un primed!!! :jd: Not good at all. Just find an old distributer and tear it apart. remove the cam gear stick it into the distributer hole and atach a drill to the end sticking out. rotate the drill for about 5 minutes. You will feel once the pump gets primed and is pushing oil throught the passages. I wouldn't do it any other way.
I have used TA's priming rod and, while the drill was running the oil pump, cranked the engine over by hand with a breaker bar on the crank bolt. With the plugs out, it should crank over fairly easily and after about 9 or 10 complete revolutions, everything should have oil on it. I would NOT use the starter to crank the motor over.
Re: HOW about Dave, I don't understand what you are trying to do here. Why would the heads not be torqued down? I thought you were wanting to prime this thing just before dropping it into the car. You could use a drill the prime the oil pump and hook up the starter and crank the engine over, without and spark plugs in it ifyou wanted to. If the engine is built right from the start,you should'nt have to tear it back down for any Buick related failures. Jim Burek
My thinking is Between pre oiling and manually spin the entire rotating assembly[ie camshaft and it's bearings/crankshaft and it's main&rod bearings] in oil pressure will rotating it I would be basically breaking in the bearings and or causing a failure [ie cam bearings]that could be fixed before a complete install into the car. To me a engine sitting still with oil being pump thru the passages isn't like a engine spinning with oil being circulated around and a fresh continual supply being added to the bearings. I quest just my thinking. Kinda like a poor man engine startup stand. I have confidence in how my short block is being assembled but how many of the other guys out there had that same confidence only to find out they have to tear it all down again. Just don't want to go there.
Haven't you coated the bearing surfaces with assembly lube? I thought the purpose of pre-oiling was to fill the passages and lifters so there's no starvation at start-up, not to actually oil bearings.
Man, I'm gettng dizzy here, reading all this stuff. OK, set the engine up to have the oilin system completely operable, filter, oil, pressure guage, etc. Use some sort of prining tool and 1/2 inch drill motor, spin the oil pump and get pressure. Now, have an assistant use a socket and breaker bar to MANUALLY turn the engine over SLOWLY while the oil is circulating. If the engine isn't SLOWLY rotated, by hand, as the oil is curculated within it, oil will not get to all vital areas, even though there is pressure at those input places for some of the components. You can do this with the valve covers and intake manifold off the engine if you wish, and with the intake off, you can see all the lifters and oil paths from them, and to the rockers, etc. If you will notice, if the crank isn't rotated, some of the lifters won't fill with oil, as they are all the way collapsed from the valve springs and not haing been primed before installation. Since pre-priming won;'t fully fill a lifter up, doing the prelube and rotate gets everyting the engnia has to get filled up, filled up and ready. Even if some of the lifters pump down after the prelube, they will be more easily filled quicker than if the engine wasn't rotated during that phase. I rotate/prelube all my engines on the stand before they go into the vehicle.
Here's my 2 cent answer. Disassemble an old distributor so that the only things you have left are the housing and the shaft (remove the thing on the end of the shaft that's for the weights, also). Stick the housing in the front cover and make sure it's seated all the way down. Stick the shaft into the housing and engage the tang into the pump shaft. Now pull it back out a little ( 1/16" or so) and slide a set collar over the shaft all the way to the housing and lock it in position. This will keep you from forcing the pump gear into the end plate. The only reason I prime the engine first is to make sure the pump is primed and the oil passages are full so it will have oil pressure ASAP after it starts. I've also bee known to pour oil on the camshaft before putting the intake on.
Instead of searching for and ruining a V8 distributor for a priming tool, the Buick V6 (231cid/3.8L) works too. Dime a dozen (sort of). :TU:
Now thats what I'm talking about Ignition Man.Rotate the entire motor until every part is completely surrounded and or pumped up with oil. My thinking on either the starter or 1/2 drill was to spin the motor as one would if he were to fire the engine up in the car.This is usually the time were the front cam bearing fails for a couple different reasons. Also the main/rod bearings will have a chance to spin around the crank a little.If the right speed could be put on the motor to spin it say 2500rpm's you could break the motor bearings in even before installing it in the car for 10 or so minutes.A oil pressure guage could be hook to the motor and while spinning the motor the oil pressure could be checked and adjusted or whatever.If something than is spot to be abnormal and requires a teardown it sure is easier now than unhooking it from the car and pulling it all back out.If everything looks and feels good than it would be your call to install it and break in the rings by driving it.
G-body, yup, that's the way it should be done. And, as you say, it can still be done that way in the chassis as well. It's just the common sense way to do it. NOT rotating the engine over gets areas with no oil to them, and that can cause real pain down the road. Me, I like to see oil coming from every place it is supposed to, so I do all my prelubing on the engine stand with intake manifold/valve covers off the engine, and haven't had an oil related failure/issue on a newly built engine fireup/break-in for a long time now, over 28 years.
