Got to see what this does first-hand today.
I was down at the shop I normally use to dyno, dyno'ing a 427MR engine. After we were finished, we popped a 427 on that they had built. I stuck around to help because FE's are pretty new to them.
We got their engine bolted up, filled with oil, and went to prime the pump. It took forever to prime and it took a very high speed drill motor to get oil pressure. We could hear all kinds of air coming through the system. Typically, when I prime on the stand, I hear few farts and burps from the lifters, but this engine just wouldn't stop. We pulled the valve covers and the oil in the top of the heads was so foamy. Primed again at lower speed so we could see what was going on up top and the oil pressure wouldn't stay up. It would lose prime.
At this point we were thinking it had a cracked pickup. It had some funky DEEP sump pan on it and I figured that at some point the pickup had cracked. While we were out to lunch, I remembered this thread and the phone call from Doug a few weeks ago. I pulled this thread up on my phone and showed it to the guys. Sure enough, when they got back to the shop, they dropped the pan and saw the whopping hole in the center of the cup. It was just sucking so much air.
This is another reason why we prime on the dyno. Hopefully we would catch something like that before assembly, but it's a lot easier to catch issues when the engine is on the stand (preferably with the intake off, etc.).
Thanks, Melling.....appreciate it.
