I am going to be rebuilding my 94 4.0 coil pack van. On rigs with a distributer you can pre oil engine with a drill before start up, what do you do with a distributerless engine? Do you just use more lube during assembley or is there a way to pre oil??

 

Pre oiling is always good but I have rebuilt at least 10 v8 engines and never done it. They get oil pressure very quickly. You can help the process by filling the new oil filter.

Pre oil if you can but it probably is no big deal. I do not believe the factory pre oils at all.

Ken

 

9d4:

On the back of the engine, where the distributor was, there is a plug with a gear inside to allow the oil pump to be driven by the camshaft. Just take that plug off, and the oil pump can be primed just like any other engine.

If you are going to rebuild the engine, it'll be obvious once you look at that area.

Ken is most likely correct about not needing to prime the pump, but if it's easy and accessible enough, it's not a bad idea to do so.

May be you could have rebuilt only 5 instead of 10 if you had done it.

Just joking Ken

 

Thanks Tung! Maybe you are right!

Ken

 

have a 20 ra diamond bore grind honing done on your cylinder walls with the micro edge rollover...use chrome moly rings....almost no breakin required and the cylinders/pistons will last several hundred K miles....
same as factory new engine machining
http://www.aa1car.com/library/honing98.htm

use lots of engine assemble lube....GM EOS is the best there is...where chemical gloves....it contains poisoness levels of extreme pressure anti wear additives...avail at all GM dealer parts counters

pack pump gears to quickly prime
hvy coat on all bearing surfaces, cam lobes and lifters, rocker arms and push rod tube ends, rod pins

absolutely NONE on rings, pistons or cyl walls...regular engine oil only

use a 0w20 synthetic oil for breakin, quick pump priming and cold start pickup of oil pressure....after first 500, change to your regular oil....flushes out most of the rebuilt cutting, dust, dirt and gasket chunks
add 4-6 oz of the GM EOS to the oil change at 500m

 

There is another vay! To use fuelp pump installen inside the oil pan for pre-oiling, but you need to update engine especially! My friend did it with russian V8 engine. He added hose and connect it to oil filter body (G53 engine has oil filter made of alloy with replacable filter core)

 

Before you take your first run and break it in read this thuroughly. We have always broken i engines this way, and all of ours that were broken in hard have lasted longer than other peoples rigs. The lowest mileage vehicle we have is my 1994 Aerostar AWD and thats because I just bought it in August. I did not have the opportunity to break it in, but I suspect that it was run hard when it was new (I think the people who test drove it ran it hard in the test drive). The reason I suspect this is because after 11,000 miles since my last oil change, I have not had to top the oil off, and it is a light golden color. Those rings are well sealed.

http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

 

When you buy a new aircraft engine for $50,000.00 you are admonished to never run it at less than full power for the first 10 hours or so. I believe that the break-in procedure for new cars has more to do with the gear units in the vehicle rather than the engine.

Ken

 

Apparently you did not read the entire article. Has nothing to do with the gear units, it has to do with piston ring seal. Most gasoline engines are good for between 300 - 600 thousand miles without a rebuild if they are broken in hard. Pretty bold statement I know, but experience has shown me this. The author of this article shows you excellent articles of cause and effect. You can see pistons that did not seal all they way around, there is burnt oil baked onto the sides of the piston. Gears do not require break in because they do not have to seal, and they do not have to be polished. They will eventually polish themselves, it is true, but they do not need a polished surface to operate correctly. As mentioned in the article, it is the pressure from the combustion that causes the ring to expand and seal contact the cylinder wall. However, new piston rings do not seal all the way around. If you think of a freshly honed cylinder as a file, it will wear down the high points of the ring. If there is not adequate pressure from the chamber, the ring will polish off the hone pattern before it seats in. Once this pattern is polished off, the ring will never seal. As mentions, the blow by gets into the crankcase and oil gets into the combustion chamber. The resulting oil contamination and carbon build up causes damage to the engine that will prematurely destroy it. So the hard acceleration is designed to cause the rings to expand fully during the break in period and ensure a proper seal. Then change the oil quickly, after about 20 miles or so. Most of the initial metal shed that occurs in a new engine will occur in this very first part of the break in regardless of the break in method you use. The best thing you can do is to get rid of this stuff. If you read all of this guys articles, you will see that there are preconceptions about engines that have persisted to this day without being questions for validity. The ideals about easy break ins date back to the 50's when many engines could not achieve high rpms, and in those days the engines were not nearly as precise. Most engines in those days needed a rebuild before they reached 100,000 miles. Even so, many people discovered (once oval bearings were discovered) that hard break ins extended engine life (Every once in a while people could get 200 - 300 miles out of these engines without rebuilds). I wonder if they knew something.