Noz1974

Thanks macster!!
Do you think my pump will pick up ok with assembly lube in it or should I open it and pack with grease, engine is in ready to go although no heat shields or bumper on yet so can prob get at it with some fiddling???

Flat6 Innovations

The best thing to prime an oil pump with, is vaseline. That said, if you follow what I outlined early in this thread, you'll have oil pressure to all internal components in less than 15 seconds, and the engine will have full film lubrication.

We do this around 100 times per year, its not hypothetical, its real, and it works.

Macster

At the risk of being accused of being wise after the fact Vaseline is what I recall being told to use to ensure the oil pump gears pull oil up from the sump and what I used on the engines I rebuilt. For pistons, rings, plain bearings, cam chains, hydralic lifters I used engine oil.

I forget or maybe never knew why one didn't use grease. Maybe to avoid the risk of fouling the hydraulic lifters or perhaps regular grease is just too thick and may not be as effective in getting the pump to get that initial flow of oil going.

For hydraulic lifters I put them in a container of clean engine oil and a wooden dowel pushed them until they pumped up, were full of oil. This can help you identify a bad lifter before you install it in the engine.

For the cam lobes and lifter bucket faces I used what the cam maker recommended. When installing a factory cam I forget what I used.

I never encountered an engine like the Porsche engine one in which one couldn't spin the oil pump without having the engine spin. One could drive the oil pump with a drill motor and an adapter and this is how I was taught to pre-lube a new/rebuilt engine and the technique I used.

As I said earlier I'd look into an external pump you could drive with a drill motor and that would get fed from a container of fresh oil and feed oil to the engine through an oil pressure port/connection on the engine block. I'd run this pump to fill all the oil passages and plain bearings with oil. If there wasn't a 2nd place to feed oil to the engine I'd use a T fitting and connect an oil pressure gage to one leg of the T and monitor oil pressure. I do not know how much oil pressure you'll manage to get. It depends upon the external pump you select and how fast and with how much power you can drive it. I recall using a half inch drill motor and while it lugged a bit as the oil passages filled with oil and pressure developed the load never stalled the drill motor. I can't recall the pressure obtained but the drill motor told me when the passages were filled with oil and not air.

If you don't want to go to this trouble, Jake Raby supplied you with another way to get the engine oiled without having to run the engine at full speed and without the questionable technique of running the engine at the very low cranking speed provided by the starter.

Flat6 Innovations

Which will not provide much, if any pre- lube, with this engine.

Vaseline is the best to use because it melts just above body temperature, some grease can take 700F to liquify, and if it does';t see that temp its easy to block passages, or prohibit full film oiling of components, especially in the valve train, far away from the pump.

AWDGuy

if you can't push down with a wooden dowel (or whatever) means it's a bad lifter?

Macster

For good old American V8 hydraulic lifers one can push the lifter down, work the lifter in the oil, submerged in the oil, and this pumps up lifter. After a few strokes the lifter gets firm to the point it is impossible to push any more. That's a good sign.

The same applies to the Porsche lifters. They operate/work/rely upon the same principles as the V8 lifters

The Porsche lifter gets worked submerged in oil until the zero lash adjuster is full of oil and has no air remaining. I just looked at a Porsche lifter to refresh my memory and one may have to work the new lifter submerged in oil by hand. The lifters are a bit different from the good old American V8 lifters.

If you find a lifter that doesn't get firm/impossible to work any more but remains "spongy" that's a sign the lifter has a defect and will not pump up properly even in the engine. Bad lifters are (or should be) very rare and I don't expect you'll come across one.

The primary benefit is the lifter is fully charged with oil and this helps the engine fire up sooner and run better after its first start. Hydraulic lifters are hard to lube properly in the engine as they require movement to bring the oil feed hole into alignment with the oil groove that feeds oil into the interior of the lifter bucket and the zero lash adjuster. It is best if the lifter starts out charged with oil. Of course it may not remain charged with oil as the engine is assembled and some valves are open and there is force pushing down on the lifter bucket. This will force out some oil but at least there is a nice coating of oil on all the working surfaces and the lifter should pump up very quickly upon engine start.

Byprodriver

Works for tensioners too.

AWDGuy

is that a wok with oil in it?

dporto

^Mmmm stir fry^

Flat6 Innovations

Guess where he learned that....
I prefer a fry daddy. Every work station and clean room here has a fry daddy in the corner.

dporto

And the recommended temperature for pumping up lifters?

AWDGuy

can you explain the reasoning?

it doesn't look like I can move the piston on any of the lifters but my mechanic friend said that doesn't mean much at all.

Flat6 Innovations

As the prime oil warms up, and the internals of the lifters do as well, air pockets inside the lifters bleed away and they are replaced with oil.

When the engine fires up, the lifters are immediately primed using this method, as long as you don't wait too long after the "frying" to install them, and fire the engine up.

Byprodriver

Not a Wok because you want a flat surface big enough for 1 bank of lifters.

Macster

It just means the adjuster is full of oil and the one way check valve which is inside at one end of the sleeve that presses against the bucket is apparently holding the oil inside the adjuster which is what it is supposed to do. Granted you can't generate as much force with your finger as the adjuster experiences when the engine is running but it is comforting to know the adjuster at least can hold oil well enough you can't manually compress it.

The zero lash adjuster is intended to be filled with oil and kept filled to effect a zero lash (hence its name) or zero clearance between the end of the zero lash adjuster that is pressed down by the bucket and the other end which is in contact with the tip of the valve stem.

If the adjuster bleeds/leaks too much oil when the valve is opened then it may develop some clearance and the next time the cam lobe comes around the bucket will have some clearance between it and the top of the adjuster or there will be clearance between the adjuster and the tip of the valve stem and as this clearance is taken up as the cam lobe continues to turn and press down on the bucket there will be a ticking noise.