Technical Is it a mortal sin to reuse a flathead oil pump?

And next week we will probably hear that Walmart has purchased Ross and JE and will be moving production to Kazachstan...
It should be noted that the days of buying a new part and screwing it right on your heap are OVER. The company you trusted last week may well now be just a label...
Everything has to be checked, and many 30 or 60 year old parts you might have once tossed will need to be scrutinized and actually fixed.
I use a simple test...if the thing survived WWII and lived on til I found it, it must have started life as a pretty good piece of engineering. Remember that a part made last week has probably NOT been durability tested by generations of dirt farmers, GI's, and hotrodders...

 

Well I have never treated stuff that way. Even a really god machinist makes a mistake once in a while, I know, because I have caught them. As the end user, its ultimately MY responsibility to catch stuff. Guys have paid me to put together motors for them, this is why. I would way rather rely on myself as quality control rather than some teenage girl who is paid 17 cents an hour to load stuff into a cnc machine. I worked as a machinist as a young guy, and the idea that a CNC machine and a slave labour teenager is somehow some kind of substitute for a qualified machinist is a sad joke. And if you are not checking your own shit, you are GOING to get bit, its not a matter of if, its when.

 

Gospel

 

My guess over 90% of oil pumps thrown away were good.

 

When you think about it...could anything have been better lubricated?

 

Agree 100%.

However, the oil pump sees unfiltered oil with the bigger 'stones' being kept out by the pickup strainer screen. This may be a moot point considering Ford flathead V8s didn't have an oil filter, but there it is.

And if I'm not mistaken some pickups are designed to bypass the screen altogether if they're clogged up enough.

I also agree that 90% of used oil pumps that get tossed were still good, I'll be hanging onto the used factory Pontiac V8 oil pumps that I still have left.

 

Yup, and I did it myself. I'd kill to have the parts that I have chucked out over the years and replaced with new stuff "just because". Because now most the new stuff is JUNK. I can still get a good new sbc oil pump, its only $600...

 

Yes if is good condition. Its not age of the part of it checks out use it.

 

An automotive oil pump is a dead simple piece of equipment. It takes about 2 minutes to pull the cover off it and drop the gears out. If it's worn, it'll be apparent with loose bushings, worn shaft, scratched up gears and marks on the pump body. If I could have bought a new oil pump for my old Pontiac engine, I prolly would have but none was available for this old relic. I disassembled my old pump, cleaned it and used some wet-dry 320 paper on an old window to make sure the cover was flat... shimmed the spring with 2, 5/16ths flat washers, slapped it back together and ran it up with an electric drill..... . holds 45-50 LBS all day....
Now, I'm kinda glad I couldn't find a new or re-pop pump.I know exactly the condition of my original Pontiac pump so I don't have to worry about it.....plus the original has a real live floating pickup that the new ones don't have.

 

Yep.....FalconGeorge and Bruce understand what I'm getting at, and the sentiment I had in my original post. I'm not against buying new parts that are of sufficient quality, but I'm also not going to have a blown flatty with Navarro heads and all the bling, bells, and whistles. I've heard the stories of the new oil pumps (among other pricey components) and the only new parts in the engine are the pistons (had to go oversize due to bore rings) and valve train. Everything else was either reground, balanced, or cleaned up and reused. The oil pump was one such questionable piece due to the current state of Chinese parts.

I didn't have much time to tinker with the pump today, but there's no side slop at all in the shaft, and looks like .004 to .006 up and down, probably on the lower end of that...just quickly using feeler gauge. There's minor wear on the bottom side of the top plate, but only on the shaft driven gear inside the housing....and it's just more polished than any actual ridge from spinning. minor wear on the gear teeth, no major scoring to speak of, really.

I relate all of this to what passes for "Grade 8" bolts now. I have old...OLD bolts that I've used and seen them bend and twist, but never break....but they were never marked "Grade 8". However, I have had new Grade 8 bolts shatter and break like Peanut Brittle from all the powdered/sintered crap they're pumping out of communist China nowadays. Trying to remove the piece of the bolt left behind in the hole is a bird dog if I've ever seen one.

 

........and on some oil pumps, the plate can be turned over. Your mileage may vary.

 

unless its REALLY scored, you can usually clean up any light to moderate scoring by rubbing it on sandpaper on glass or a surface plate.

 

Okay, rebuild it if you have the means. I was just implying not to just stick a used one in...


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Falcongeorge- The guy was asking if he should just stick his old pump in or buy a new one. Would you just stick a set of used Pistons in your engine without measuring or inspecting them?


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I don't think anyone is suggesting you just take the old one and wash it and throw it back in. That WOULD be foolish, careful inspection and repair as necessary, if it really is somehow totally fragged, I would get rid of it. But that would be pretty unusual in my experience.
I have a small block ford one that is probably not usable, but the crank is pretty badly scored as well. Looks like the motor had some metal shavings floating around inside.

 

Aha! So you read the first post and didn't read the rest, didn't you? See posts #7 and #9. You gotta read the whole thread man! Hey I have done it myself...

 

Ok, the original question is do I get a new oil pump or just stick my old one back in. I say you'd be better off with a new one. The big dick contest is over, I'm unsubscribed and on my way out to the garage to actually work on a car.


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I've broken a few oil pump shafts in my day but have never seen one just stop pumping oil suddenly. I doubt that using an old pump (carefully inspected) is going to cause a sudden catastrophic oil loss. I'm pretty sure your oil pressure gauge is going to give you some warning of impending failure.

 

At NO point did I say that I would just throw the old one back in without inspecting it.....if someone can infer that from anything else I said in that paragraph...you know, like in the parts where I said I sent my cam and crankshaft off to be inspected, reground, etc.....then I have no idea what to say to those folks. The question was pretty simple, I thought. I'm not trying to be a smart ass....but when I indicate that reusing other parts was privy to professional inspection and repair, it seems pretty obvious that a broader point of the question was to expound upon the finer points of what "reusing" on entails, if others' experiences have shown that reusing them has played out better new junk, etc etc ad nauseam. Perhaps the part "Is there something I'm missing" was too concise of a summation of the information I was seeking? :/

 

awww, poor guy...his feeling are hurt...and after I tried to sweet talk him...That's what I get for trying to be nice instead of being true to my nature...

 

All parts have a build spec, if the parts are within spec, then they should be good to use. I agree with the majority here, I would check it out and use it if good.

falcongeorge, lets here some pointers on the forged pistons. I'd like to build a hot little small block Mopar. It would be nice if I could do it on the cheaper side of expensive, and can't afford to do it.
Tony

 

LA's are a tough deal if you are talking 360's all the old TRW's are dish tops. You would be looking for TRW L2405F's.
Theres another way to go, that's build a "Hoover" motor with a TRW L2385F std or +020 '72/'73 340 piston, but my guess is that will be controversial on here, so I will sidestep that one. I built one as a young guy, and it RAN, but it requires some fancy machine work, probably not cost effective or even do-able in this day and age. Good automotive machinists can be quite difficult to find now, depending on where you are.

I have bought three sets of old forged TRW's in the last six months, ranging from $100 for my 351C flat-tops, complete with polished shot peened rods and sps bolts, to $150 for a set of NOS +030 L2165F's for a 327. The five +030 L2165's I used for my brothers motor were $80 on ebay.

 

LMFAO ey?.
Poboy, he speaks the trusth. I spent $3.5 sbc's building my 8BA (that's 3.5 times what it would have cost to build a small block with the same HP in "tight wad speak"), I was not going to trust it to anything less than a Smelling high volume pump. Modern technology provides 25% more lubrication according to the manufacturer. Not just good insurance, good improvement over the original. Just remember that the HV pump requires modifications to the pan. I had to add a bit to the "can" that surrounds the pump. I could have gotten away with a bit less "addition" but I forgot to subtract the gasket thickness when I measured.

 

question about taking the gear off the end of the pump drive shaft , I cannot get/drive the pin out . I tried drilling it out ..Its harder than hubs of hell.

 

cannot see a reason why you would want to do that, also if its that hard its a good pin. look at the gears should have no score marks in the meshing lobes, look at the bottom plate, if the plate has minimal wear marks I would use it as is if its possible to flip it over and have a good sealing surface even better. check the run out if its too much you will have to find bushings. the end clearance is easy, like said in previous posts just sand down the housing on glass preferably but use a figure 8 motion so as to not create a curved face, which sanding side to side will do.

 

it is rusty and needs cleaning . I bought another pump at a swap meet here in northern Washington(Monroe)/the fellow said it was new not used . but my old original is wanting to come apart for said cleaning. it looks good and no decernable slop in the shaft.

 

Yes,,,the pin is very tough,,,,it takes some effort to remove it .
Look at it closely,,,,there should be one side that has a smaller brad than the other.
Concentrate on that side first,,,might even have to grind it down a little with a cut off wheel .

Support the gear on something,,,a piece of wood maybe,,,and take a punch and try to drive the pin out first.
With some persuasion,,it should come out okay ,,without any grinding .

Tommy

 

I will post a word of warning about this. Last year, I built a fresh 258" 8BA. Just because I thought it was a good idea, I bought a new oil pump from Speedway Motors It was not a Mellings (which they also sell), but their own brand. I got the standard volume pump, because I have had problems with Hi-Volume/Hi-Pressure pumps in other engines. When I got everything put together, the oil pressure was low, in my opinion. To make a long story short, I replaced it with a known good used Ford pump and pressure went from 15 psi (hot Idle) with a hot running pressure of 40, to 25 psi and 55 psi.

 

My machinist did a quick check on mine and said it should be fine. No marks, etc., but I'll double check. I was actually going out tomorrow to pick up some old original flathead parts, and one the parts I wanted to pick up was an oil pump. Nowadays, I'm just plain tired of all the cheap imported stuff that we have to put up with.