Update! Everyone chime in!
Okay guys, cleaned the heck out of everything! No more rustproofing by Mobil 1 and Buick!
To all the high volume - High pressure oil pump guys:
It eats parts. Period. Do not do this unless you are milking a tired motor for more miles, or have made several other oiling system mods to accommodate it. It puts way too much load on the cam gear and cam sensor gear and housing, especially when the oil is cold. If you have a healthy bottom end, it is completely unnecessary. It not only wiped out my cam gear on an otherwise perfectly healthy cam, but also wiped out the cam sensor. Not just the gear, but it had so much side load on the sensor shaft the bottom bushing was also spinning in the housing!
I can't believe it ran at all.
** I know a great carb - distributor guy locally who specializes in old Buicks *
He used to do all of my 455 work - carbs and distributors were always "set it and forget it" from mild to race. Thank you, Carmen!
He rebuilt and rebushed the sensor so it is better than new, and also re-spec'd the oil pump and timing cover to be better than factory new.
I got the new cam (204-214 @ .050, 112 deg lsa) installed, cleaned everything up, and it all looks great. I put the timing chain and gears on, and was about to install the oil slinger, but I have a few questions:
1) There is a steel washer with the oil slinger, does it go beteeen the slinger and the balancer, or between the slinger and the crank gear? Despite a million pics, I missed it.
2) The slinger itself appears to have some runout to the outer edge - and it seems intentional - there does not appear to be any physical damage to it - but if it were spinning the outer edge of it would wander in and out relative to the engine itself - almost as if it were slinging oil in a wider, larger pattern? Is this intentional or is it warped or bent?
3) I looked up the procedure for setting the cam sensor on GN Type.org and regarding marking the balancer at 1.45" and so forth - If I am understanding this properly, it is to get the cam sensor to 20 BTDC - couldn't the same be accomplished using the timing marks on the balancer and the plastic timing cover marker? The plastic degree indicator goes to 20 degrees in 4 degree increments and curious enough has a seperate mark at 15 degrees I think. There has to be some reason they did this.
4) Lastly, I have ordered some ZDDP and some other stuff from Kirban's (he rocks) - what is the proper cam break-in procedure?
Opinions??
Thanks again guys! Sorry to be long winded, but it's better than you guys having to ask me more questions just to answer my questions!!