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Fresh motor build with problems!! Help need suggestions!

C

colelkhunter

1/2 ton status
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Sep 19, 2010
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tennessee/colorado
Just rebuilt a 350 for my 84 blazer. All new bearings, gaskets, rings everything about 500 miles ago. Driving to work today about 55 MPH and truck slows down by itself. Noticible loss of power. Not loud noises no nothing. Starts running a little rough and complete loss of oil pressure. I got into a gas station quickly, shut it off and checked underneath for oil or anything. It was completely clean. waited a few minutes and started right up, again with no oil pressure so I immediately shut it down. I parked it and got my wife to come get me to take me to work. Got a friend with a rollback taking it back to the house for me, but i am at a loss. With no more miles than I have put on a fresh rebuild? Didn't smoke, rattle nothing just no oil pressure and no power. I have to get this going as this is my daily driver. After work today I am going to tear into it and would like some advice on where to start. could the new oil pump have gone down? How can I check it?
 
start by taking the oil pan off, drain it but catch all the oil in something you can inspect the oil in. You may find what you never wanted to find right away. You will be able to tell how the crank bearings are and if something happened to the oil pump pickup or something. Are you sure the distributor went all the way down and had a good mesh with the oil pump drive? I'd take the valve covers off too and inspect the oil. You may be in for it, sorry.

I'm only guessing though as I have never rebuilt an engine, but I've taken a couple apart. Very limited knowledge.
 
after talking with a couple friends I think the oil pump may be the culprit. drive it everywhere yesterday and no problems. I have been driving it for about 2 weeks. Always held 60lbs of pressure. just makes me wonder if it took anything else with it. Like I said no noise, no knocking nothing just no power and no oil pressure. that's the first thing I am gonna do is drop the pan and take a peek. Maybe it will be obvious what the problem is. just hope the oil pump didn't take the motor with it when it left.
 
in 30+ yrs of turning wrenches, I've NEVER seen a chevy oil pump sh*t the bed..... not alot that can go wrong with them... pickup untacked, falling in the pan, yeah, I've seen that a few times...

verify the oil pressure with a mechanical before you tear into it...
 
it's got an autometer mechanical oil pressure guage. Where does the loss of power come from? It didn't run hot. When I shut it off the guage read 180
 
Got it home and the million dollar question is " what caused loss of power and no oil pressure?" answer.........distributor hold down vibrated loose and allowed distributor to pop up no longer contacting the oil pump. Got it fixed and runs like new, didn't hurt the gear on the dist. from what I can tell. Just probably shortened the life of the engine by a few hundred miles by running it with no oil pressure for about 2 minutes. thanks for the comments
 
few hundred miles huh
I'd go looking for damage asap, unless you think the loss of power had something to do with timing.
 
it is decidedly so. dist. wasn't making good contact with the cam. Pulled the pan off anyway, to be sure and found do damage. I scraped by on this one, I won't be so lucky next time.
 
Had that happen, pulled the pan and no problem found. Still running strong.
 
definately dodged a bullet. My initial thoughts were start looking for a motor. Kinda felt stupid when I figured out what was wrong. I feel comfortable with my mechanical skills, but it's the stupid stuff that gets your goat.:D:doah:
 
well, thats twice in a about 6 months in here that a dizzy has come loose... dodging a bullet is putting it mildly.. double jeopardy there, oiling and potential timing nuke...
 
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