Re: Ping Conor the LIAR: Still awaiting your answer...

BUt you don't do that on a service oil change. As you say you do it when you've rebuilt a pinto as well. The trick on Rovers is if it doesn't prime then you turn the engine over backwards to prime the oil pump, then crank it without the plugs in. Much quicker,

So... basically you're saying it's a mechanics trick that's not in the official workshop manual, only really done after high performance rebuilds of engines and even then only on the older versions and even then it turns out there's a better way (run it backwards then crank it with the plugs out).

Wow. You certainly showed us. I bow to your superior... something.

Well it wasn't him who started it. Spinning the pump is better, but then you have to redo the timing etc.

Nobody started it - everyone's still priming the pump in seventeen different ways.

Some reckon you need a tool which allows the pump to be spun up using an electric drill - before you install the distributor. But if you've filled up the filter, cooler, oilways etc there's no need.

Jerry will now say this is a bodge or something...

And you can't do that on the later engines because the oilpump is driven by the crankshaft.

hahahahahahahahaha

Beg to differ.

Unless you are going to claim that 'distributor shaft driven' is crankshaft driven because, ultimately, so is every mechanically driven part of the engine?

Not so. The distributor is driven by the camshaft - and the distributor shaft drives the oil pump.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Duncan Wood" saying something like:

Is the correct don't-give-a-f*ck dealership answer, LR or not.

Really?

Indeed. At the very least, do it with no plugs in.

In message , Jerry writes

Ah, that's the classic "JLE" of old. Isn't it about time you crawled back under your stone for another few years?

I've done it using a drill to prime the pump, shoved a screwdriver tip into a drill and primed it through the hole for the dizzy. Works a treat.

I've only had to do it once, on an engine that hadn't been run for around 20 years.

Which is the point, it's an almost unknown issue on a normally maintained engine, worth being aware of if that guage doesn't move after you've changed the filter though.

I'm no Rover V8 expert - can I ask why petroleum jelly, I'd have thought standard grease would have done the job?

Julian.

It dissolve in the oil better. being an oil product, wheras normal grease is full of soap.

Just what I was thinking. If not, he certainly has Jelly's 'know it all' style. Mike.

I see.

I just rebuilt a big block Chrysler, a similar problem WRT oil pump priming, the pump is externally mounted. I used the Crane Cams engine assembly lubricant, it is like syrup, and ''strings'' like chainsaw chain oil - that's prolly all it is! I had no pump priming problems, I helped it along by priming by hand with a length of hex bar in a speed brace.

Julian.