Reply to "Oil Pressure??.. What say you??..."

If you use the oem oil pump drive shaft the oem distributor gear roll pin works fine. The heavy duty, non-twisting oil pump drive shaft is what causes all the trouble.

The gearotor oil pump does not like to pass debris, the rotor tries to stall which puts strain on the oil pump drive shaft. The oem shaft twists to absorb that strain. The replacement heavy duty oil pump drive shafts don't twist, so it shears the little roll pin holding the gear on the shaft. That gear should be a very tight fit on the shaft even without the pin, if the gear fits the shaft loosely it will only make the tendency to shear the pin worse.

The purpose of the heavy duty oil pump drive shaft is to reduce "spark scatter" which occurs when the oem oil pump drive shaft twists. Ford guys running a heavy duty oil pump drive shaft used to install a small secondary roll pin inside the oem roll pin. The current practice today is to replace the oem roll pin with a spiral wound roll pin, the same type of pin used by MSD in it's distributors. But I guess you guys are saying those are the pins that are shearing. I've never heard that one before.

Doug mentioned that breaker points are old school, well in my opinion distributors are old school. Conversion to a Ford EDIS-8 is the current trend out amongst the Ford world. A crankshaft triggered distributorless ignition system (DIS) more precisely fires the ignition coils each and every revolution of the crankshaft, the ignition timing is more consistent from cylinder to cylinder, all of the timing functions are set electronically and operate perfectly forever, there is nothing mechanical to wear out or service. Unlike single coil distributor ignitions in which performance falls off at high RPM a DIS provides full spark energy at any real-world engine speed. With a DIS there is no spark scatter, no cross-firing and no misfiring.

On to the subject of the oil pump.

If the bearing clearances in a Cleveland are set properly (0.0025") the standard volume oil pump provides plenty of oil. I know drag racers turning the Cleveland to 9500 rpm with standard volume oil pumps even with 0.0035" bearing clearances. However, I think one could make a case to run the high volume oil pump when the clearances are opened up for high rpm drag racing. And running a high volume oil pump won't hurt anything, even if it isn't needed. However, the best Ford recommendation is to blueprint the standard volume pump, setting the rotor clearances at 0.002" to 0.003", and run the high pressure spring as recommended by Ford. Be sure to use an oil filter designed for higher pressure. Ford also installed an improved oil pump pick-up in the Boss 351, installed a baffle/windage tray in the oil pan and filled the pan with an extra quart of oil.

There are other considerations for building a Boss 351, 7200 rpm spec lubrication system. But that covers the oil pump.