it looks as though oil is making it through the motor but i am not getting a reading on my mechanical gauge. the 83 22r motor in completely rebuilt, so all parts are new. i have primed the oil pump, cleaned the pickup screen, replaced the filter. i used plastigauge on the cam, main, and rod bearings...so i know those clearances are good.

after the rebuild this motor did sit for about 5 years. every few months i would remove the valve cover and pour oil over the cam, rockers, valves etc, and manually rotate the crank a few times to keep everything oiled.

I am out of ideas and would like to know if anyone else has had a similar issue or any advice for me before i begin to disasemble?

 

I would use a manual guage to check and make sure you atually have oil pressure for sure , but I have seen the sender get pluged with "dirty oil" .. you might try removing the sender and checking it out


.

 

sorry, when i said mechanical i meant manual (non-electronic). i can even see small amounts of oil make it way through the tiny clear tube that goes to the gauge. but still no reading.

 

i have heard others say a spun rod bearing could be the cause...but wouldnt that create a very high oil pressure since the oil passage from the crank to the rod would be blocked by the misaligned bearing? or am i missing something???

 

I had the same problem a few years back when I rebuilt my engine. Turned out that I had missed replacing one of the oil galley plugs so it couldn't build pressure. I got lucky and it was the one on the bottom. Don't know if that could be it but thought I'd throw in my 2c.
Good luck.

 

^^^ x2 Had a reputable shop do a motor for a friend of mine, The shop missed one of the oil galley plugs as well. Oil was flowing just not enough. There should be 3 galley plugs in the 22r

 

thanks for the input, where are these plugs located?

 

are there plugs in the crankshaft as well???

 

You can look at the passenger side of the plock and you can see where the bore runs. Plugs are in the front behind timing cover, back of block, and on the bottom inside the pan.

 

No plugs in the crank. Spun bearing wouldn't give you the prob you're having. I have the same type of oil press gage. How far up the tube is the oil getting? Could be bad gage, missing plug, or bad oil pump.

 

i ran it for about five seconds and oil move only about a 1/2'' up the tube. gauge is new,oil pump is new, i will look into the missing plug on bottom inside pan. i hope it is just a missing plug, that would make my day!

 

Sounds Like your oil pump is working fine then so almost has to be one of the plugs. Hope it's the bottom one, the other two take a lot more work to get to. I only found it cuz I had a different block rebuilt and went and looked at the old one and found the plug still in that block
Still kick myself on that one.
Best of luck to ya.
Let me know how things go.

 

What a relief...i pulled the pan off and sure enough i was missing the bottom plug. after replacing the plug the gauge read 75 psi at idle (cold). THANK YOU so much for your help.

 

Great! Glad that my past f-ups gave me insight to help someone else.

Keep them old 1st gens rolling!