I just got the correct lifters in my 283 rebuild and thought I'd prime the engine at this point (I have a DVD on rebuilding SBC's). On the video, the guy had a distributor with the gear and such removed so he could mount it and spin the shaft with a pair of vise-grips. Any way within four or five turns he had oil coming out the lifters. He then turned the crank a bit and kept turning the dist. to work the air out.
I don't have a stripped down dist. so I used a big flat blade screw driver. I turned it clockwise about 20 revolutions and only got oil out of a few of the lifters. I didn't think much about it (figured It just needs to spin faster) So I put in the push rods and rockers and adjusted them. Then I thought more about it and wanted to prime the engine properly so I used a speed wrench with a big flat head on it. Now I turned it fairly briskly for a few minutes. No oil is coming out of the top of the push rods. Should it be? BTW it's a new Melling High volume oil pump with a new strainer. Block was tanked, and preassembled with new cam bearings and plugs at a machine shop. Oil did squirt out of the oil pressure gage plug hole with the screw driver turns (oil hit the floor before I realized I forgot to plug it). Should I see oil coming to the top of all the push rods? Could I have forgotten something?