Thread: Oil pump drive shaft

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I pulled my MSD distributor as I decided it was about time to prime the engine since the first fire attempt is.....real soon, maybe Saturday or Sunday. It primed up real nicely and really heated up my good 3/8" Bosch drill. Pulling the priming tool out I evidently pulled the dist. drive out of the oil pump - I can turn the engine over by hand and the drive just sits there (I can't imagine that it broke as it is one of the Ford SVT heavy duty shafts ).

I really don't want to pull the pan again (4th time ) so am open for suggestions. My idea is to use a piece of tubing/hose to slip over the shaft and try to lift it back into place. I would have tried it already, except I seem to have tubing that is either too small or too big and a trip to Home Depot will be necessary later, that is unless someone has a better idea .

'Course it doesn't turn, the distributer drives the pump!

You are so right - and I also momentarily lost my mind . I should have said instead that when I put the priming shaft back in, that it turned freely with absolutely no resistance (I guess that's what being tired and frustrated does to my sensibilities)

BUT - it is still out of the pump - and I still don't have a fix other then try a piece of tubing to pull it up and dither around and try to reset it or drop the pan( which I will do tomorrow if no one can come up with a miracle fix

Heavy duty grabber w/ magnet?

Like Jack suggested, you should be able to do a magnetic pickup...except that if the magnet has a flex joint at the head, it trys to turn sideways. I have used the magnetic pickup thru a hose before....put the hose close to the drive shaft and push the magnet thru it and then pull the whole shebang out.... beats bubblegum on a stick!

Sounds like the pump drive is in there upside down. There's a snap-on washer thingie that's supposed to stop the shaft from coming up far enough to come out of the pump. If that's the case, pull the pan. Even if you can finagle the thing into place, you're setting yourself up for a major headache the next time you pull the dist.

Thanks guys.

I did try the HD magnet - I have one of those rare earth versions and it didn't even move it!!! I've screwed around with it so much that it appears jammed now and may even replace it as I'll bet it's scored from rotating against the cast iron

As far as the slide on clip - it HAD one, and the shaft WAS in correctly.

I am going to pull the pan - again as that clip has to have "gone astray"

Since "other things" have come up today and I wont have a chance to work much on the car so I decided to just go ahead and order a new
ARP drive shaft (instead of the Made in China Ford SVT piece) just in case the existing one is gouged. Also ordered a pan gasket and a set of ARP oil pump bolts as they weren't available when I put the engine together originally 3-4 years ago. At least it's an easy, but messy job with the TCI frame as the pan comes straight down with nothing to interfere

I pulled the pan today as my parts were due in this afternoon - though the UPS website now says delayed until tomorrow due to the weather - nasty thunderstorms.

The oil pump shaft clip was there, but the retaining tabs are deformed so it was loose. The shaft was out of the oil pump, though it had been assembled correctly. It was scratched in 2 places, but probably reusable if dressed down smooth. It will be a spare. Doing a web search, it seems others have had clip failures too with resulting dropped drive shaft. This is my second "event", the first was on my '63 Galaxie with a 406 - way back then. Obviously, Ford still hasn't had a better idea on oil pump drives.

Since this was the first time oil had been circulated - ever - as it is a crate engine, I was amazed at the amount of crud in the pan. I had done other work on the engine, ARP bolting, 'better' camshaft and head hardware but in an extremely clean environment. Some of the crud is soft so I expect that there is some assembly lube carryover - the rest is gritty. I'm posting this as a heads up to others - crate motors don't always have clean innards!!!!

It looks like I probably screwed up when I installed the standard oil pump after I removed the high output version that I originally thought I needed. Since I was laying on my back that time too and only lowered the pan enough to snake the pump out, probably (most likely!!) got the drive shaft back in upside down, then when I primed the engine last weekend, pulled it out of the pump. I really don't know, but the clip came bouncing out when I pulled it apart.

The attached pictures show the correct way for anyone in the future that pulls a SB Ford apart. The long end with the clip attached goes up. The clip bottoms against the block and prevents the shaft from (normally) pulling out of the pump when you remove the distributor.

As a note, this ARP pump drive is similar to the Ford heavy duty version, but does appear to be finished a bit nicer. Also, the ARP pump to block and pickup to pump bolts are their normal high strength rather then the Ford's which have 4 lines on the head, denoting some sort of spec that I'm not familiar with yet.