Crunchking

I have a forged 346 with an A&A PS1 kit installed. From day one, the engine has never had good oil pressure. Fully warmed up, the engine would have around 18 pounds, but would rise up to the mid 40s on full acceleration. We installed a new oil pump as part of the engine build. I thought we had possibly hurt the bearings originally because we started the car for about 20 seconds with no pressure. We left the front oil channel plug out. Fixed that, got pressure, but it was low (20 pounds). Ran the car for 30 miles (very easy), pressure stayed low and had bubbles in the oil. Tore it back down to find that the oil pump intake tube seal did not seat properly. Fixed that, still no improvement in the oil pressure. I had a shop install a high volume oil pump. No improvement. We thought the bearings were probably bad and we would just drive it until we had a futher problem. About a month ago, the pressure just dropped to zero at idle coming home. Naturally, we thought the bearings had gone. Dropped the front end, pulled the pan, and pulled the mains and a couple of rod bearings - NO DAMAGE AT ALL. In fact the bearings all had .002 clearance. The only other strange thing was a brown smudge on the rear passenger's side cylinder.

Any ideas??? My mechanic is stumped. We are going to check the new pump out, but short of simply rebuilding the A&A motor, we have no idea what else to check. By the way, I am sure that this is not the fault of Andy's forged short block. I am certain it was something with the original buildup, but what. The only other thing might be the cam bearings, but I would think the rod bearings would show some damage if the cam bearings had been damaged enough to completely lose pressure. We did find some non-metallic flakes in the pan.

Stumped.
TIA
Dave

Shinobi'sZ

Try hooking up a mechanical guage to see what the oil pressure is.

If you already checked your main, rod, and cam bearings and they are good...you dodged a bullet, next gallery plugs (front and rear), oil pump pick up tube....the oil pressure sender too.

But the mechanical guage will confirm whether it is an electrical problem or not.

Crunchking

I thought at first that it might have been the gauge, but then I started to get valve chatter very loud so I shut the engine down so I wouldn't throw a rod. When we pull the pump, we can check to see if anything happened to the front oil plug. Can't check the back one without pulling the engine. We haven't checked the cam bearings yet, but I just can't see them being significantly damaged without there being some damage to the rod or main bearings.

cablebandit

oil pan to pick up clearance is where id look next