Maybe a borad member that is close to you will lend you the cam bearing tool? Or offer to "rent" it to you for a small fee and a deposit of some kind and you pay to have it shipped to and from?? Just some thoughts for you.
Well got a chance to work on the car today. Pulled the timing cover and cam. Looks like i will need a timing chain front cam bearing looks bad. I ordered parts to rebuild the oil pump including the Booster plate. Just need to get the TA shim kit. I'll do that when i order the cam. Looking at the TA-284-88H cam.
Maybe put it all back together and drive it and start building that 71 block? I'm kinda in a similar position. I have a 72 455 in my 69 Riv that was rebuilt by the PO and I know there are some issues with it so I picked up a 70 block and I am in the process of rebuilding it.
If it isn't out of the car yet and held good oil pressure other wise, I'd cut the filter up and see how much metal was in it before I went any further. I'm a fan of replacing what needs replacing but not everything unless warranted. Were you using a good high zinc oil?
The '70 engine is still in the car, its the one we are talking about. the '71 is on the side with a spun bearing. The one in the car had good oil pressure before i started the tear down do to what i thought was a lazy lifter.
You should really try to find an oil with the right levels of zinc. I've used some of the Valvoline for motorcycles that still has the previous spec rating of SF. https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p...ationPath=L1*14926|L2*15035|L3*16564|L4*16566
Update: Have collected all the parts needed to get the car back on the road (Waiting for the new cam Bearing tool to arrive this week). Started on the oil pump upgrade with parts i ordered from TA, (Thanks to Larry70GS and his thread. http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/oil-pump-clearances-and-oil-pressure.326597/ ). Here is what the timing cover oil pump looks like.It had the old style High volume pumps kit installed since '89 and had good oil pressure. Can I still use it? Here the old pump kit. Old gears next to the new ones and the new thrust plates. Hopefully i can still use the timing cover and get this all installed. Need some advise from the experts.
I'd want to see what the side clearance is on those gears in the housing pocket with the new gears. The new gears and the thrust plate should be all you need with a good clearance cover. The old thrust plate could probably be surfaced and reused on another motor.
Well i did install one of the new gears, and i feel like its rubbing up against something. Not sure it cause i have the cover flat on the table or not?
If you wan to use a 10W-40 weight, I would suggest either: Joe Gibbs: Driven, HR5 https://www.summitracing.com/search...tKeywordMatch&SortOrder=Ascending&keyword=hr5 or Brad Penn: Semi-Synthetic #71446 https://www.summitracing.com/parts/bpo-71446/overview/
Howdy! It's not necessary to use racing oil but that is usually the only place you will find oil with enough zinc or ZDDP. Back when our cars were built the available engine oils mostly all had plenty of anti-wear additives in the oil. But as emission regs tightened and catalytic converters became the norm, oil began to get less and less of an additive package that really protected flat tappet engines because the anti wear materials ended up fouling catalytic converters. Without zinc in the oil camshafts and lifters could begin to suffer. Novels have been written discussing the pros and cons of zinc and ZDDP, so this is just the beginning. Read up on it. http://www.v8buick.com/index.php?threads/zddp-update.340250/ I have used Brad Penn oil for 20 years with no cam or lifter problems. Some people use conventional oil and then add ZDDP themselves. Either way works. You can probably find a retailer in your area or order some online. I haven't seen where anyone answered your question about reusing that timing cover. It looks pretty bad to me. The pocket where the gears spin was originally smooth. As the gears mesh together they create pressure and the tolerances and clearances between the gears themselves and the pocket is critical. All of those grooves show that a lot of metal has been passed thru that pump. Same as your front cam bearing. If you tried to smooth down those grooves you will possibly make the pocket too big to create adequate pressure. The fact that you were unable to spin the gears might mean that a burr or piece of metal is sticking out and binding the new gears... Most people have gotten away from using those extended gears because they can put too much of a bind on the distributor. It's possible they were used as a band-aid to try to regain the pressure lost with so much wear to the pocket. I'm sure you don't want to hear that you need a timing cover, especially since you're just trying to get this engine running enough to get you back to your original 71 engine. The way it usually works is you'll be looking at a complete rebuild because you'll decide to look at a rod bearing while your in there. If the rod bearing looks like the front cam bearing you'll need to replace all of them. If you're going to do rods, you might as well do the mains too. Well...all of the trash that went thru the oil pump scarred your crank, so let's turn the crank down. No sense in putting it back together with original cast pistons so I'll order a custom set that will put me at zero-deck. I think you get the picture... Someone else may say that your timing cover is usable. I just never want to spend a lot of money on an engine and then let the oil pump be the possible weak link.
