Fresh rebuild, no oil pressure and major leak

[paw140]

I wish it was as simple as leaving the old o-ring in place. I have carefully inspected everything and can find nothing wrong, which is why I am very puzzled and plan to be super careful moving forward to not try and start the car until I am sure it is ok.

[h20hamelan]

I am confident it sounds like matting surfaces, maybe your oil filter was dropped. $10.

[paw140]

I finally have an update... no leaks and great oil pressure! I'm chocking it up to a loose oil filter and assuming that the gasket wasn't seated properly giving me the illusion that the filter was tight. Here's what I did:

- I bought a new Mobil 1 oil filter, prefilled it, and installed it.
- I fabricated a pressurized vessel so that I was able to feed oil into the galleries through the pressure gauge connection. I used about 20 psi of compressed air to push the oil in and confirmed that my stock gauge was reading 20 psi. I also confirmed that there were no leaks.
- Started the engine and got pressure immediately and confirmed there are no significant leaks.

I cut open the original Fram filter and didn't find anything wrong with it. The gasket was perfect, filter media looked fine, anti-drainback flapper valve was perfect, etc. Thus, I am going to blame myself and say that I didn't have the filter fully tightened, even though it *was* tight.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Paul

[2cams70]

Thanks for reporting back! - a good learning experience

[HCA]

You say the pump is ok, and that the p.o. rebuilt the engine using a grinder to hone the bores - what else has he done one might ask? Has the engine ever had pressure in your ownership? Is everything good on the top side? Did he open up the cams to wash them and not replaced the plugs maybe?
The list could go on. As said, a strip down is called for, yes?

[Emma-Knight]

I once turned out the central hollow insert by accident. Maybe it was turned out a few rounds, still sitting in place but now performing as spacer bottoming against the filter thread end

Anna

[JohnMorin]

Could you possibly have cross threaded the filter when you first installed it?

I've seen this happen before and of course oil leaks out because the seal is not complete all the way round. There's not much thread in the filter itself.

John

[The Veg]

Fram filters are junk.