Thread: First Fire Plans

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Roger - hopefully you have either the SVT or ARP heavy duty oil pump drive shaft, first of all. Next, I hope the engine builder used a good moly based assembly lube to reduce chance of premature wear as well. I used at least a tube on the cam bearings - to the point I had trouble holding on to it

With a roller cam you have virtually no worry about wiping the lobes as they are steel vs a flat tappet cast iron or steel. In my case, I just primed the heck out of the engine with a primer shaft and using a variable speed drill that has 'balls' - recall that it is primed counter clockwise looking down. You will need to run that primer shaft for several minutes if the engine has never had the oil passages filled. Some say up to 30 minutes, but I do it with the valve covers off so I can see oil coming out of all the push rods. You might need to bar the engine over a couple times to obtain that oil. I then dropped the distributor back in and fired it up. Sounds like you might have a slight delay - I wouldn't worry about that. Oil - I just use the Motorcraft Semi Synthetic, 10W-30 with my 'E' roller cam and 1.7 Crane rockers. Mobil 1, Amsoil, Valvoline or similar are also good. I will NOT use Castrol - every Ford that I've tried it on will use 1 to 3 quarts between changes. The others - none. Other folks have good luck with it so I can't say it's bad oil

Russ/Dave,
Thanks for the responses. I do have a message in to my engine guy to see what he did in the way of assembly lube, and any specific instructions he likes to see, but with the holiday will not hear from him until probably Tuesday next week. My oil pump driver is a Summit model that is a 7/16" shaft stepped down to 1/4" at the top for the drill, and has a billet insert to fit into the block to keep it centered. Hopefully that will work OK. A Makita variable speed drill will spin it. I appreciate the CCW looking down pointer - keeps me from looking it up

I think I will get everything wired to the point that I am ready to fire, then pre-oil and do the finals on the engine which should let me fire it in an hour or two.