basically ford stuff but you get the point
The most frequent call we get at work is people with oil pressure problems. The funny thing is, it's never the pump itself. Come to think of it, in all my years of building engines, I've never seen a pump that didn't work. Of course you have the ones that break off and fall into the pan. Or the ones that have the cup plug work its way out and shoot the relief spring out. The impeller that we use is a standard volume, 1.100" wide. It's the same one that is in the Moroso dry sump pumps found on our 825" Pro Stock engines. We have measured over 17 gal/min flow in these engines. It is plenty big for any engine.
The #1 problem we see is when the wrong lifters are used, or they are installed backwards. When they are in backwards, the small oil hole in the lifter side directly connects with the main oil galley. When this happens, all the oil will be pumped up the pushrods to the top end, and run the pan dry. I'll try to put some pictures up. We have a client that bought one of our pumps, and had almost no oil pressure. We sent him another pump, same result. This is when we built out pump dyno, so we could make sure they were working properly when we sent them out. We free flow them, then close the pump exit with a ball valve, then open it back up a little so that it holds about 40 lbs. Dead headed, they're always 75-80 lbs. Anyway, after working with the man for many days, we find out that he rebuilt the engine at the same time he bought the pump. It had good oil pressure bebore the rebuild. When he assembled the engine, he got mixed up and installed the lifters backwards.
We also had a guy with our pump that had low pressure using an Eliminator block. Some of these blocks take the oil pressure at the back, like a stock block. The problem was that the lifter lines were restricted with a small orifice, as they should be, except the oil pressure was taken at the end of this restricted line. When he moved the pressure gauge line to the front, by the oil filter, it was fine.
We are seeing another problem, where the pickup bolts to the pump. Often times, the pickup leaks here, sucks in air, and makes the oil real foamy. Most of the pickups have a thin flange, 3/16", and if a thick gasket was ever used on it, it warps and leaks when a new gasket is installed with a new pump.
Last week, a guy called with low pressure, and found his new A-460 block had a low spot between the 2 pump mounting holes. It was .007" low between the studs and was freely flowing oil out from under the pump.
Since we're in the oil pump business now, and have sold over 300 pumps, we are seeing lots of problems that can cause confusion. Every day we have at least 1 caller with a pressure problem. As new problems come up, I'll discuss them here. Kaase
