06goatm6

M16 x 1.5 to 1/8 NPT adaptor in the stock sending unit location

1/8 NPT to 5/16 adaptor to 5/16 brake/ fuel tubing

Garden sprayer from Tractor supply, the sprayer wand was 5/16 so I just slipped the tube into the control valve.

I added a valve stem to the container so I didn't have to pump.

Heat up the oil to 100F or so, it was 40F when I did this so the oil was quite thick and heating it helped a lot.

Add air pressure and make sure you close the valve before you suck air.

Voila, you have lubricated the bearings and primed the oil galleys in your new rebuild preventing any premature wear that would occur before the oil pump primes the system on initial fire up.

I did loosen the 4 subframe bolts to allow a little more access to get tools on the sender, and get my hand and tools in there. It's tight but it can easily be done without removing the intake.

CMY SIX

so what "rebuild" was it? sounds to me like the motor was still in car? if this was just a cam or heads and cam in an already run motor none of that was really necessary.

realcanuk

Good write up and I wouldn't start a fresh motor without pre oiling it. I do something similar but I use the oil plug at the front left side of the block. Easier than the sender I find.

schpenxel

Nice. I used a pneumatic diaphgram pump on the last one I built. Was pretty awesome.. you could use a regulator to turn the oil pressure up and down. I had it drain back into a bucket, go through a filter, and go through the engine again.

I actually found an oil leak I would have never found without it.. with the engine off you could hear the oil coming out. I thought it was something totally different than what it ended up being.

timd38

Just turn the distributor shaft to prime the engine. Forgot, it doesn't have one....

HOXXOH

I've never done that on any engine I've built, because I liberally coat every contact surface with a high zinc/phosphorus content lubricant during assembly. It won't get washed off until well after the pressurized oil arrives and then it mixes with the rest of the oil.
The average engine oil pump will flow oil to every surface in about 10 seconds at idle speeds. Pre-filling the filter reduces that to about 6 seconds.

While it's true that 10 seconds with no flow can wipe bearings at 6000 RPM under heavy load, that's 10 times the revolutions as a no load idle speed.

I had one engine run for about 3 minutes with no oil whatsoever (I forgot to check pressure first) while I was adjusting timing and carb. The engine had cracked the pump somehow prior to the oil pan install, but showed no damage to bearings on a subsequent teardown to check everything. That engine ran a full racing season and bearings were fine at the season end teardown.

Pre-oiling the engine won't hurt anything except wash off some of the assembly lube and leave the regular oil in its place. I just prefer to bypass that operation. The engine goes through that same process at every oil change too.

06goatm6

Engine was fully rebuilt, it wasn't until after I got it in the car that I found out you couldn't just turn the motor over to build pressure, and obviously you can't use a drill like an older style small block. The plug most people use was in-accessible in the car so I came up with another way to do it.

06goatm6

Definitely would have done this if I had known before installing it in the car, it would have been much easier. But as you said didn't want to take the chance of firing it up before oiling everything, even though assembly lube was used.

06goatm6

The LS oil pump are SOB when it comes to priming themselves, I am also working with SAE 30 break in oil in a garage that was 35-40F, so I wasn't going to take that chance on several thousand dollars to just fire it up and hope that the pressure came up in 5 or 10 seconds, I wanted to make damn good and sure that it had pressure before firing it up, so I took 20 dollars and an hour or two of my time to make sure. It was a lot easier to do this than to fire it up, have no pressure, and wipe my brand new bearings and crank/cam etc. and have to pull the motor again.

And as you said, it cant hurt anything so why not for peace of mind.