well I started up the new motor tonight, and noticed some sound coming from under the valve cover. figured maybe had to recheck my valve lash so oh well. upon pulling the valve cover I realized every rocker except the very back one was bone dry. fired the car up and looked like only the back rocker was oiling at all and it was gushing out pretty healthily.

car has 60~psi of oil pressure on cold start up and I'm running the LS7 lifters. just wondering if anyone believe the lifters are the culprit, since I believe I've heard of it happening to people before.

 

Did you not pour oil on the valvetrain? It takes a few minutes for oil to get up there.

 

there's assembly lube on everything and I poured oil over the valve train, but nothing seems to be pumping at this point outside the back rocker. I exaggerated about the bone dry part a little lol sorry for the confusion

how many minutes should I let the motor idle roughly? I just don't want to run it too long if the oil will never pump up

 

Give it a few gentle revs from the engine bay and some oil should drizzle out of the pushrods.

 

I'm sorry I don't have any great insight into your specific issue. But a word of advice is a practice I was taught to always follow - prime the engine before starting it the first time with the valve covers off so you can see oil coming up to the top end and that nothing starts dry. On a 4th gen, you need to this on the engine stand as it can't be done with the motor in the car. Otherwise, do it right before starting. I know of one engine saved by this practice. Prime, prime, prime but no oi and the drill was turning the oil pump unusually fast. Hmmmmm. Oil pickup was laying in the bottom of the pan. Ooopsie.

Rich

 

only the rear rocker squirted any oil when I did this

 

New lifters should be cleaned of machining residue and corrosion protectant and then soaked in oil before install. Did you do that?

 

I soaked in oil, didn't know about any other recommended pre-install requirements

do you believe machining residue within the holes could block oil from entering the lifter? I assumed they were pretty much a direct drop in. guess I was wrong if so

 

The protectant on new lifters can be gummy. They usually recommend you clean them with mineral spirits, then oil them.

Put some more oil on top of the valvetrain, then run it at about 1500 RPM for a few minutes. You should get some oil by then.

 

so pretty much cover the valvetrain with oil and let the lifters "break-in"?

I'm assuming this problem wasn't with all the lifters simply because one was less gummed up.

would this rpm be problematic due to the fact that I'm still breaking in the motor and have yet to change the oil?

note: the motor hasn't seen any rpm outside idle, with the exception of the occassional soft-rev to maintain idle under initial start.

 

If you are breaking in a new engine you should not be letting it idle. You should run it at 1500-2000 RPM for a time to help get the rings seated and oil to flow. Maybe this is your whole problem. Again, idle is what you don't want to do to a brand new engine.

 

I was under the impression you wanted to let it idle for a couple min (check for leaks etc) and then change the oil, followed by steps of increased rpm

time for me to go ahead and start reading more

 

Yes, you need to read some proper procedures. Been lots of posts about it on this website.

 

any links of some good ones? alot of what is posted in this regard seems to be more opinion based versus little fact, would rather not get bad info on such a crucial thing

 

You can add another engine to your list mine.
Builder told us to prime is before we put it into the car and he had a nice tool which had a gauge on it etc. We put the drill on what looked like an old dist. and started drilling the gauge never move... so after about 1:30 seconds of the gauge doing nothing we decided to check the oil. No oil at all in the pan. So we filled the pan and primed it and all was good.

While we would of checked the oil before we fired it up I am sure, but who knows it could of slipped anyone's mind. Point is, it saved us from what "could" of been bad.

Bandit, remember you do not need to break in the cam in an lt1 (roller). Some engines are different.