They look to be against the water flow. If I’m following the arrows correctly. The oil line exits the cooler on the water intake side.

They seem to go from block to cooler, cooler to filter, filter back to block.

Many peeps over the years have routed their lines incorrectly from block to filter (especially with 502 moi for some reason - prob because do popular ? ) and back. Worthy to take a look.

Thanks, I will double check the hose routing. I’m really hoping something external is the problem and it’s not the oil pump. Just seems odd to me that I have 60 psi idle and temp barely goes up then 2 minutes into a run temp goes to 250. I even thought bad gauge but pressure changes also with the temperature so I ruled that out. Has anyone done away with the pressure valve in the remote housing to send all oil to the cooler?

Just dumped the oil filter into a container. It does have some glitter in the oil but im not sure if it’s from the flat tappet cam breaking in or from a bearing. I did a 30 minute cam break in and then changed the oil and filter. I’m sure there is probably some metal still from the lifters wearing in.

I would double check your harmonic balancer, one could have shifted and your timing could be off. Oil temps are more sensitive than water temps as an indicator. Use a piston stop and rotate your engine by hand carefully and mark the harmonic balancer where the pointer comes to in both directions. Your 0 mark should be equal distant from each mark.

Thanks for the replies guys. This is giving me really good things to check. Any thoughts on doing away with Merc remote filter setup and going to a different style? One with thermostat rather than pressure valve.

Well, was hoping for a simple fix but not the case. I pulled the intake and found shavings in the valley. Looks like I probably wiped a cam lobe out. I’ll have to pull it to verify. Lifters looked ok. I’ll be pulling both motors now to inspect the bearings and clean out shavings. No more flat tappet cams. Never again. I followed the break-in procedure exactly and used all recommended parts for compatibility. Still lost a cam. Hard lesson learned.

Bummer, sorry to hear that.

That was my fear during my last motor build and was the tipping point to do a roller cam conversion. I wonder if more cams are going flat or that the internet give destroyed cams a larger audience. Hopefully you can get it reassembled before the warm weather hits .