I just finished a full rebuild on my '87 22re and am wondering what the best way to start it up is...as far as priming the oil system, etc.

What do you recommend?

 

I hope you coated your lower end bearings in grease before you assembled the motor.

Other than that i would say dump a little oil up and down the camshaft and fire it up

 

Agree with hope you lubed the bottom end and top end with oil or at least engine assembly lube if so then what I do with the motors I build is , Pull the coil wire and turn it over a few times check to see that there is oil pumping then turn it over a few more times once your sure it getting oil put the coil wire back on and fire it up and idle it at 15-1800 for about 30-45 seconds and drive it .

When you get to 2ND gear run it up to 4500 rpm let off the gas let the rpms drop , swap to 3rd repete and do the same thing same with all gears up to about 60 mph , run it like that for 20 miles drain the oil change the filter and run it like you stole for another 100-150 miles and do the oil again then change the oil at normal intervals I use 15w 40 Rotella to break in the motor for the first 3,000 miles then swap to synthetic 5w30 and a good filter.

 

I'd also pull the EFI fuse to keep the injectors from firing, just to keep the gas from washing out the cylinders

but yeah, oharleyman explained it perfect

 

how do you know if the oil is pumping throughout? And this "run it like you stole it" is better than the "take it easy for the first 500 miles" theory?

 

The wrangling starts.
Run er hard. Thats my vote. Pay close attention to the Ol H mans oil choices.
Jim

 

Good point forgot to say something about that

Put a pressure gauge off the sender and check the pressure , as for the "run it like you stole" part just a way of saying run it like you want it to run , i.e. if you want it to be a baby then baby it , if you want it to run like a hot rod run it like your racing everyone and everything you see , this is the second most important part of the break in YOU HAVE TO DRIVE IT THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO DRIVE or you will end up very unhappy with it in the long run.

 

I second olharleyman thats what I did (kinda) for my recent new motor build