Oil drained, Oil Pump Priming

[Tegriffic]

I’m after any advice / experience anyone may have re this please. The engine is a 4.3 (pre serp). The car has had to stand unused for nearly 11 months.

Having started her up oil light remaining on and it was quickly obvious that the all the oil has drained back to the sump which is apparently something that’s common with the pre cat engines.

I know obviously need to prime the pump and I can see that there are two common approaches having packed the pump with vasoline which is either to spin the engine on the starter or remove the distributer and spin the pump with a drill.

I’m favouring the drill because I don’t really want to spin the engine with the starter if I think there’s no oil in the galleries but my understanding is that the drill approach can be a bit hit and miss and of course means likely knocking out the timing.

I’d be interested for any advice, or experiences anyone has had with either of these methods and it anyone has managed to fill the oil galleries by any other means before spinning the engine (I’ve seen various other approaches on non-Rover engines of pumping oil around by removing sensors and accessing the oil pathways.).

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Tegriffic]

Thanks for the pointers. I was already favouring the pump pack approach. Looking at the Rover V8 manual it looks like the oil pump can be located either down by the filter or at the front of the engine at the front cover. Any idea which applies to a pre cat 4.3 ? thanks.

[Tegriffic]

Thanks. I did speak to a well known specialist of TVR's and they advised against the drill method saying doesn't always work on the older engines but didn't really elaborate and advised pre pack the pump. I'm not unmindful that the pack method doesn't deal with the pre lube before cranking / startup and am still considering that. Interestingly I've found some video showing a 4.6 (so no distributor) being pre lubed by pumping oil into what looked like the pressure sender port as far as I could tell and oil certainly appearing at the rockers quite effectively so I need to research that a bit more too.

thanks for the reponses.

[Tegriffic]

Thanks for all the replies. They have been dead useful. I checked the filter the last service used and it's a Coopers Flaam FT5916,which does seem to have the anti return fitting.

I think I'm going to pack the pump, change the oil and use 20W50, and then spin the pump with a drill. I figure that's the safest albeit a bit more work. I haven't set timing before but then, I haven't spun an oil pump before either !

Thanks.