331 Oil Pump Recondition

[Rob]

I was hoping to spend a little money on the Hemi this week, but I found some pistons I need to save up for, so I am on to other things I can do for free. I disassembled the oil pump and have it soaking in parts cleaner overnight. When it's clean, I'll snap some pics. It looked real good on the inside so I am going to reuse it. Pictures to come.

[Rob]

Alright, one reconditioned oil pump. One thing that i always do on a georotor oil pump is this. I always flip the outside rotor upside down from its original condition. This puts the wear side of the rotors on opposite sides and introduces new unworn surfaces to each other. I almost didn't do it this time because the pump was in such good shape. I also gave the relief spring a little stretch. Not much.



In this one, you can see the swinging pickup. It's pretty cool.

[Rob]

What a hot thread. Anyway, I cleaned the oil pan up Bohemoth that it is. It had some dents in the bottom so I cut the baffle out so that I could knock out the dents and make sure the under side of the baffle was clean. Got the dents out, spot welded the baffle back in and primed and painted it. I also put an OLD STP sticker on it. These are hard to find, but I figured what better project to use it on and it looks old school.

[mart]

Hi Rob! NICE looking oil pan!! Your making good progress. By the way - just wondering - did you ever get a positive I.D. on those pistons? Also, have you contacted the guy that's got them and worked a deal yet with him on them yet?

mart
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[Rob]

Hi Rob! NICE looking oil pan!! Your making good progress. By the way - just wondering - did you ever get a positive I.D. on those pistons? Also, have you contacted the guy that's got them and worked a deal yet with him on them yet?

mart
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Thanks!

Yup. I posted the bad news in the wanted section. One was cracked badly. So much for that.

[mart]

Thanks! Yup. I posted the bad news in the wanted section. One was cracked badly. So much for that.

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Yeah. I just read your post about the cracked piston, *about 2 minutes after* I posted to this thread. I've posted a reply to your post in the "Hemi Parts Wanted" forum.

mart
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[mart]

P.S. I still think since they're almost new, you should consider keeping the 7.5 to 1 truck slugs and consider turbocharging. It would take a bit of scrounging in the boneyard to find a pair, but two carbureted draw-through turbo set-ups off of a pair of late 70's-early 80's 3.8 Buick Regal, Park Avenue or Riviera 'T-types' would be cheap and pretty easily adaptable. Years ago, I used one of these sets ups on an otherwise bone stock Slant 6 in a '79 Dodge pick-up and it worked like gangbusters. For the the hemi, you could use two complete set-ups and mount one on each bank. You could swap out the stock Q-jets for a pair of Thermo-quads...invert the stock truck exhaust manifolds, make up some bracing tosupport the turbos and bolt the turbos to the manifolds. Since the carbs on the Buick set-up attach to the turbos, rather than to the intake manifold, you could even keep the original 2-bbl truck intake and just hog it out a bit and have the two turbos feed the compressed fuel-air mixture into the intake through some piping fabricated from 2-inch steel exhaust tubing and a flange that would bolt on in place of the 2-bbl truck carb. Two stock Buick turbos would be a bit oversized for a 331, but not grossly so - and in light car with the proper gearing, I think the lag would be manageable. Once they got spun up though, even at a 'relatively safe with stock pistons' 10 lbs boost, it'd be a hell of a ride! Best of all, with some judicious scrounging and some basic homebrew fabrication, it could be done on the cheap and allow you to use a lot of the parts you already have.

[Rob]

Dont think I've not mulled it over. But, it's just not kosher with the "old school" look and build I am wantin to do. If push comes to shove, I will just get the 8.5 pistons from Egge, and blueprint the deck height and get it smack on top of 8.5 and cam it wisely.