Diddo on what he said!!! And I tried to JB weld some lifter screens ONCE! I never do that again. I've never had any luck w/ JB weld!

i have never liked the idea of welding the pickup all the way around,that creates a lot of heat and i feel it can distort the pump housing.imo,the welding of the pump is what killed the build.if the pump housing was distorted,and rubbing occured inside the pump,it would cause the damage to the dist gear in a hurry.also,when the dist gear started peeling,the schrapnel would get sucked right into the pump.

Mike, I agree with your assessment. However, when I went back and looked at the pump again, he didn't actually make that weld all the way around the pickup, but instead made a single very deep weld. Perhaps that by itself was enough to damage the pump body or the cover. (I wasn't aware at the time that the cover and bypass should be removed when tack welding the pickup.) Next time I am going to look into welding a bracket onto the pickup that fastens under one of the pump cover bolts.

In either case, I still can't account for the very fine debris that appeared to have gone through the bearings. I am not sure if that was from the gear, or if it came from somewhere else. I expected particles from the gear to be larger and shiny. I did find some shiny particles in the oil filter, but there was also a lot of the fine black abrasive particles in the first oil filter that was removed. I think that is the stuff that did most of the damage to the bearings. Maybe they just missed some crap left over from the machining process and that is what started the demise of the pump - although from looking at the pump and the gears, there had to be some pretty good sized debris that went through it to score the body up like that and put those notches in those billet gears.

Hoping that a few of the pro engine builders have seen something like this and can tell me if I am looking at damage from leftover rebuild dirt, or something else. Hoping to get the rest of the engine torn down this weekend.

The wear on that bearing looks like too tight of a bearing clearance to me. That would put metal in your filter. I'd be curious to know the clearance that bearing was run with. On that pump it almost seems to me as the pump was damaged in a previous engine blowup and reused.

Blue, I would be shocked if the engine builder had run the clearances too tight, but I guess stranger things have happened. I just ran with the assumption that it was grit that tore up the bearings based on all the crud in the bottom of the filter can.

It was a brand new Melling Select 10778c pump in there - saw it myself. Didn't pull it apart to see the inside, so it would have had to be Jegs selling me used parts if that was the case.

don't think the pump welding had any effect..something was somewhere and went thru the pump...either in the engine or cooler, filter adapter, lines.. at this point you may never know...but I can tell you from my previous experiances I'm betting on hiding somewhere in the block..

EZ, what is your take on all of the black grit in the bottom of the filter can? Debris from the distributor gear, or something else?

I'm going to add some very strong magnets in the pan, heads and lifter valley this time.

Did you reuse the oil cooler from the previous engine? Did the previous engine blow up prior to this build?
Eddie

Eddie, yes, I did use the cooler from the previous engine. It did not "blow up" per se - it did lose a chunk from two pistons off the ringland, but they went out the exhaust. No spun bearings or anything like that, and no shrapnel in the engine.

Budman, I can't see the filter to clearly..my eyes aren't what they used to be....magnuts are not a bad idea, I used to epoxy them in the ends of my heads as I used to keep breaking off small pieces of valve springs....I have never ran the new iron type dist gears on a billet cam...always bronze(old school) but I still think the pump issues were loading the dist gear bad....