BritishV8 Forum

Nope, all the oil is going up into the even numbered valve cover, flooding the umbrella seals on the exhaust valves and starving the odd numbered bank. Turns out the SBC lifters offer very little restriction to oil flow whereas the Buick ones use a completely different metering method which greatly restricts flow by comparison. I think G is right about that. I can't order the right lifters until Monday. Johnson is the brand and they are costly. I can't think of any other scenario that explains everything.

Jim

I would be real surprised if it is the lifters.  Where are you measuring the oil pressure?

Check your bypass valve.

I can't say I've ever had this happen before. Started my new engine and if I hadn't done it myself I'd swear it was built by a team of retarded Chimpanzees. Comically low oil pressure, I mean we're talking under 5 psi at idle with straight 30 wt oil and just over 10 at 2000rpm. Lots of smoke out of the even numbered cylinder bank too. TBH I began to suspect when I prelubed the engine by spinning the pump. Didn't see the pressure I was expecting and as I had the valve covers off I was watching the rockers for oil and I wasn't seeing much at the rear rocker. Then when I went to the other side the head was overflowing onto the ground and made about a 3 ft puddle. I think something may be off with my lifters. Could be a little low on oil too so I'll top that off and try again. All taken together that's a bit discouraging considering what I went through to build this engine. Possibly the rings can still seat. Possibly new lifters from TA will also help (kinda expensive but if it fixes the oil pressure then OK). Pulling the intake back off wouldn't be fun but easier than swapping to the 340. Not really the result I was looking for. Other than that it seems pretty solid though so I guess that's a plus.

Jim

And..., we have ignition. The engine fired up, smoothed out, started picking up speed and I dialed back the throttle stop to 2000 rpm and let it run until the headers started smoking. Sounds pretty good I think. I'll go back out in a bit and get set up to pull a datalog and let it run long enough to warm up a bit and then back off the idle, check the oil pressure, etc. Being a roller cam it won't need that initial break-in run.

In the end after some fairly intensive troubleshooting that mostly turned out to be duplicative the trouble ended up being those ground wires on the coil packs that I overlooked. Honestly, I meant to do that, I even planned out where they would go. Just slipped my mind. Kinda like finishing the battery end of the new alternator sense wire. All done now though. Looks like the old double-key issue is also gone.

Nothing quite succeeds like success as I always say.

Ever get to feeling that you could be getting a little ahead of yourself? Yeah, I had this sneaking feeling I was overlooking something... Downloaded the tune to the ECM on the simulator, check. Fired up the VCM Scanner, check. Bundled up the laptop, HPT module and cable, went out and connected and verified it works, check. Looked at oil level and adjusted for fast idle, check. Now what'd I forget? That injector fuse is just fine...

Oh yeah, might want to swap the newly programmed ECM into the car in place of the spare I've been using to check the wiring maybe? Kinda doubtful if that one will even start the car. Yeah. That might do it. So here we go again.

Jim

Well that was a bit anticlimactic. Cranks OK. but doesn't light off. From my datalog I suspect the injectors aren't firing so I have two tests in mind, aside from the obvious noid light. Look at the fuses closely, particularly the ones powering the injectors, and perhaps squirt some raw fuel into the butterflies. Always something isn't it? But this shouldn't be so bad.

Jim

Last night I had a funny comment about that, too bad but this morning it's just gone. Sorry. Should have typed it then I guess.

Learned a thing. For about 6 years I've had to double key to start the engine and with the help of Google finally determined that it's very likely due to the way I had the cam sensor indexed. I had it switching at TDC but discovered that really should happen earlier at BDC, so hopefully that issue will now go away.

About all that's left is to download the tune and fire it up. Anxious? yeah a little if I let myself think about it too much. So let's not do that.

Jim

The beast is about to awaken.  Seek shelter.

Getting close. The end of my throttle cable had dropped, bounced off the radiator hose and gone through the radiator fan into the shroud where it was inaccessible. I had to do a bit of disassembly between that and the coolant leak which was an open port below the upper radiator hose. Got out the orthoscope and found the throttle end and then had to make a plastic tool to drag it across to where I could get it out of the shroud. Couldn't leave it in there, it's the sort of thing that could cause unknown problems later on. Then yesterday sorted out a resolution problem with my laptop and got about halfway done on the tuning file.

That leaves indexing the cam sensor, checking valve lash, downloading the new tune and some paint touch up and I should be ready for ignition. More likely tomorrow than today since I have grass to mow too.

Posted this shot on BuickV8 with the comment that it looks kinda beefy:



Jim

Although these projects are never done, I'll call it complete "for now".