1967 429 oil pump priming?

[John Bryan #21196]

I've replaced the leaking gasket on the oil pump cover assembly of a 429. I did this from underneath the car with the front cover in place.

Upon restart I do not get any oil pressure. All of the gears are installed and the engine has oil. The filter does not fill with oil, leading me to believe that the oil pump needs to be primed somehow. The Cadillac shop manual does not mention priming the oil pump.

Does anyone have suggestions/insight?

Thanks,
John Bryan #21196

[Vinny]

You are correct.  The oil pump should be primed.  What I did when I rebuilt my 66 429, I got a long screwdriver that I longer needed and cut the handle down.  I then ground down the round edge to a square so it can fit in a drill.  Pull the distrubutor (Don't forget to mark the rotor position) and take off the valve covers.  Now, put uour newly modifed screwdriver end into your drill. Put the flatend into the distributor hole and into the oil pump shaft end.  Spin the drill at full speed until you see oil coming on top of the rockers.  Now your oil pump is primed.  Put everything back and you are good to go.

[35-709]

You'll know right away when the pump picks up the prime, the drill motor will start to labor.  But as Vinny says, keep going a while to make sure everything has gotten oil.

[John Bryan #21196]

Update on priming the oil pump:

Simply attaching the screwdriver bit/drill to the oil pump drive via the distributor hole did not work. I spun the pump for at least an hour with no results. Second method was to squirt motor oil into the pump gears via the opening wiht the oil filter off, then use the drill to prime the pump. Again, failure. Third method was to pour oil through the oil pressure sender opening in an attempt to fill the pump cavity from the pressure side. Strike three.

I then removed the oil filter and used a shop-vac with a 3" hose (same as oil filter diameter) to suck the oil through the pump. This worked.

Priming the oil pump turned out to be a bigger project than replacing the oil pump gasket. 

[35-709]

I'm sure you spun the pump in the correct direction.  Never heard of that much trouble priming that pump ----- but, there's lots of things I haven't heard about.

[John Bryan #21196]

Yes, clockwise, same as the distributor rotation.

I've never heard of such trouble with priming, either. I had the front cover off for a water pump change recently and didn't have to prime after installation.