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

I'm finishing up the rebuild on my 1950 flathead, and I'm considering reusing my oil pump. I've reused my cam and crank after having them inspected and coming back with a clean bill of health. My oil pump seems tight, and appears to have little to no wear on the gears. There's no play in the shaft and all seems well based on things I should be looking for in a worn one. I'm not for cheaping out when it matters, but I'm also not for throwing money out the window especially considering lots of these older parts are better quality than the new ones. Is there something I'm missing, or is it a mortal sin that shall be punished harshly by the Flathead demi-gods?

 

I don't know why everyone figures everything has to be replaced with new shiny stuff. I prefer good original chevy oil pumps to new ones.

 

It's only a venial sin but you should say 10 Hail Marys just to be on the safe side....

 

Might not be a mortal sin but nether is stupidity!

I can offer my opinion.

With the expense of rebuilding a Flathead I wouldn't take a chance,think of it as a heart,if you were facing a heaart transplant would you prefer a 66 year old heart taking in consideration that the last Flathead was built in '53 and it might or might not pump lital fluids another 6 months.

I know I would opt for the newest heart I could get.

Moral to the story,I did try and cut a corner and used the original oil pump and it lasted about 5 months the Flathead Gods don't have a sense of humor.HRP

 

Asking for help can be humbling, but Not asking can be very expensive.
Old saying; "The only dumb question is the one you don't ask".

Give it a good look over, a good cleaning, and USE IT!
(You'd probably have more problems with a new one!)

 

Unless there are some obvious problems, you are better off using your present pump rather than some new one of unknown origin. There are end play specs available. I think it's .006, but you should double check that.

 

oh, you mean like a nice new melling SBC pump cast god knows where, broke off and wound up in the bottom of the pan? Kinda like that??
I'm re-using the original pump in my olds as well, checked the gears for end clearance, no scores or scratches inside, I have more faith in that than a new one.
check the end clearance, good visual inspection, if its good, run it.

 

When you say "end clearance", are you referring to the drive gear at the bottom of the pump (i.e. play in the shaft when pulled.....WAKKA WAKKA!!) or the clearance between the gears that actually pump the oil and the inner wall of the pump chamber?

 

clearance between the end of the gears and the bottom of the pump measured with a feeler gauge. end plate of the pump shouldn't have any heavy scoring either. You can close up the clearance by rubbing the pump body on a piece of sandpaper on a sheet of glass or surface plate. The other thing that should be checked is the pressure of the by-pass spring, but I don't know what it should be on a flathead pump, I am an overhead guy. But a gear type oil pump is a gear type oil pump, as far as function, they work the same.
On chevies, I prefer to use a good original pump, this isn't a question of trying to save a buck, they are superior to the shit that is being made now. Same reason I go around buying up used TRW forged pistons...

 

What he said....

 

I was not referring to a sbc,I assumed we were talking about a flathead oil pumps.

There are some cheap flatty oil pumps out there,the early ford store has a high quality pump but it's far from being cheap. HRP

 

No I know Danny, but I am willing to bet there is almost as much cheap, sub-par junk being made for flattys as there is for chevies...

 

No doubt in my mind. HRP

 

Yea, the Fenton headers from speedway motors...

 

I've been using used mechanical parts for decades, pistons, oil pumps, cams, heads torque converters ect out of necessity, as a poor boy racer. I used other guys discards. Now the skills I learned doing that have really become a boon, with so much new stuff (even stuff made by companies that made good shit in the past) being complete and total %$*&ing JUNK, knowing how to look at a second hand part and being able to suss out if its usable or fixable has gone from a plus to a flat out necessity. Nowadays when you replace an old piece with a new piece, the odds of the new piece being inferior quality are probably in the 60%-75% range.
And NO this is NOT an anti-China rant, its an anti cheap, scumbag, lowlife, carpet bagging bastard American contractor rant. As the Chinese middle class has grown and wages have risen, these same douchebags are fleeing China in DROVES, and moving production to India, Indonesia andany other hell hole that will let them use slave labour in their country.
As the baby boomers die off and the tax base disappears, the great American "race to the bottom" is rapidly closing in on the finish line, and when the chequered flag drops, it aint gonna be pretty...

 

Nowadays, its a tossup, New chinese junk or good used Made in USA?

 

This is not about oil pump but example here. I put my new sbc into my truck i put all brand new everything. And guess what. My brand new water pump has a slight leak. Brand new fuel pump. Was $#÷+ it ran but i coudnt figure out what is this cut off isue was. So i had put back my whatever age fuel pump and it doing me pretty good. Just new crap is bs foreal. It hard to find thay diamond in the ruff when it comes to new

 

I used a $155.00 brand new melling oil pump from speedway on my rebuilt flathead and never thought about it ever again. It's cheap insurance for the cost of not plumping oil through your freshly rebuilt engine! You'd be dumb not to just get a new one in my opinion. If you can't afford another $150 to ensure the longevity of your flathead maybe just stick to something cheaper for your next engine rebuild.


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inspect and reuse its the inspect part that would give me piece of mind with any part used or replacement

 

Bruce Lancaster really needs to comment on this thread...

 

Flathead, sbc, hemi whatever the engine is, you have LOTS of hard earned money and time tied up in it. I've never heard of anybody not replacing the oil pump at the very end of the build to save a few bucks. When you lose oil pressure and smoke your brand new engine, don't post a thread on here lookin for pity.


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forget the price of your parts in that engine. how many hours have you put in it? how much is that time worth? put a new pump in it!

 

A properly rebuilt original part is way better than the new Chinese crap.

We commonly rebus hand rebuild helicopter oil pumps at work. It takes some skill and a few tools but is not hard to do.

If you can use a mic, a lapping plate and ream a bushing to size you can rebuild a pump.

 

Soo your saying he should just get a new block, crank and rods cause what he has is old?.." . Just get new" that way he's completely safe?

 

Yes, but a lot of guys just don't have those skills. Writing cheques is about the extent of their mechanical abilities.... F*ck, seriously, an oil pump is not some kind of mysterious black box (to some of us), you inspect it, check the clearances, assemble it with care, and its, well I was gonna say foolproof, but that might be stretching it. Some guys can barely manage to get the bubble wrap off their new Speedway stuff without breaking it...

 

so 29tudor and Dan C, lemme guess, you would NEVER put used forged pistons in a motor either, right? You would get some of them nice shiny new hypereutectic pistons instead, right?

 

Original pumps are VERY often good as is and may well be better than current Chines new ones. I have commented in the past on a couple of Melling disaster pumps people I know have discovered...Ford seldom let anything with gross dimensional goofs.
THINK. What is critical in there? Shake that shaft. Any play? replace bushings, scrutinize shaft.
Gears...side clearance is specified win '49-51 manual, but should be good as there is no realistic chance of enough sideplay to put gears into the wall. Play between gears also specified in there. End clearance is critical. There is no spec for that so I stole one from an SBC handbook...I think it was .006, I have to look up numbers as memory leaks. Sand end plate on a slab of glass or a good flywheel and zillion grit paper if it is gouged at all. Check endplay and reduce it if needed by sanding pump body the same way. Get the grinder out and blueprint the oil exit hole at top.
After the incidents I heard of, I now consider my bucket of actual Ford pumps to be gold.
By the way, on the late pumps '49 has straight cut gears, '50-53 spiral, generally considered better.
Use an original pickup, with thoroughly cleaned screen, if you can. Again, think...I bought a spare original screen online...when I got it, it was clear it had been cleaned by glass beading!! That thing can never go on an engine unless I get a sonic cleaner a leave it in there for a week!
By the way, I pulled an old Merc one with the windage tray setup out of my bin and checked it. The screen was blocked with actual small gauge GRAVEL cemented in place with sludge like roofing tar. Lord knows how the last owner ran that Merc...
It had no slop in shafts and specified clearances were right on. It really needed nothing but a swizzle in solvent.

Failures of new pumps, resulting in nearly zero oil pressure in new carefully built engines: More than one had undersized body diameter where pump slid into the block casting. A pressure test with pan off revealed Niagara Falls grade oil flow coming out around there...
Another turned out to have incorrect machining of the relief valve seat so the valve could not acually seat...nearly all the oil was straight bypass.

 

This^^. But some guys would rather count on some teenage girl in Mumbai for quality control, rather than their own skills...

 

By the way...brands we tend to trust are in many cases just a name applied to very dodgy parts from elsewhere, not the old company with its own machine works and experienced workers. Very few automotive brands mean much any more.
My new pumps used to come from Joblot in New York. They used to let me into the warehouse behind the counter to explore...there was a 55 gallon drum of ne Ford made pumps, right next to a 55 gallon drum of new Ford pickups of every possible application. Those days are long gone...

 

100% right, and I alluded to that a few posts back. About a year ago, I built a Vortec head large journal 327 for my brother. I had heard horror stories about the current TRW/Sealed Power forged pistons, so I started with 5 used +030 TRW's off ebay, figured I'd fill the set out with 3 new ones. I returned NINE new pistons before I had three that were acceptable. All the goddam pin bores were out of square!!

These guys just don't get it, its not about "saving a buck" its about most of new stuff is JUNK. If you have the money to throw Ross's or JE's in every single motor you build, well I am happy for you. My guess is, most of these guys are paying someone to build the motors, and really don't know whats inside them. Now THAT is playing Russian Roulette.
Cripes, don't even get me started on Sealed Power lifters...I re-face the old hard-face chevy lifters when I can find them...