lifter galley crossover tube

Here goes. It’s 3 parts. The crank, the block and the oiling system. I’m going to lay out the oiling system the way I changed it last and show how the guy that did it originally did it first. He wasn’t wrong he just didn’t have the oil do something all the time.

The crank MUST be cross drilled or it won’t work. And it has to be drilled so that the oil holes come out 180 degrees from each other. IOW’s, the oil feed hole should be at 12 o’clock and getting oil from the main feed, so when the crank is cross drilled the oil hole to the rods needs to be at 12 and 6 o’clock.

The block needs to be set up so the original oil gallery’s do not feed ANY oil to the crank. Ever. The simple way to do that is to drill and tap the main feeds coming down from the passenger side lifter gallery from the main bore for 5/16 set screws. You do that on the 1-4 main feeds. You can also tune the passenger side gallery and then do NOT drill into the tube. The thing that happens doing it this way is some oil is always up in that gallery. It doesn’t really matter. You can also do both the tube and the set screws if you like redundancy. The goal is to stop all oil coming to the mains from the OE passages.

Once you do that (forgot to mention that you also need to install a set screw under the number 1 main to the drivers side lifter feed so no oil gets up there...it’s just another set of leaks) you need to restrict the oil to the cam bearing feeds. I used an .080 hole in a set screw installed in the cam bearing feed. The cam/rockers will be getting full oil twice now instead of once so you can squeeze it down. The goal is to limit oil everywhere you can while getting the oil where you want it, when you want it there. It’s about oil control and timing.

On the filter side of the block you need to plug the big return feed from the filter and tap the untapped hole in the filter area for 3/8 pipe because you are going to run a remote filter.


Now that all the oil blocks and and restricters are in place, you can move on to correct the timing.

You must always run full groove bearings, so once the timing is corrected you get some oil flow started to the rods from the bottom side, which is when the oil needs to go to the rods.

If you are running main caps that aren’t flat across the top, I put them in the mill and machine a flat across the tops. Then I flip the cap over, use the hole in the main bearing to find the spot for the hole (you can lay it out if you want, but this ain’t rocket surgery) and I drill through the hole in the bearing to get a start and then take the bearing out and finish the hole. You do this for caps 1-4. The hole needs, to be sized for 1/4 pipe thread, and then you thread the holes from the cap side, not the bearing side.

Next we move to the plumbing. This is the way I ended up with the system. I made it as adjustable as I could so I could control the oil as much as I could.

I made a distribution can that was 4 inch in diameter and about 8 inches long. On the top is a number 8 fitting (which is plenty of the oiling system has been fixed to tighten up all the oil losses) and on the bottom is 5 number 4 fittings.

On the filter side of the block there are two holes, one tapped and plugged. This hole is now used to feed the number 5 main only. So you screw a 3/8 pipe by number 4 hose fitting in there and hook a number 4 line from the bottom of the can to that fitting and that’s done. The other four feeds are a bit more difficult.

Each of the other 4 hoses feeds a single main cap/bearing. I have used both a Milodon Super Stock pan and several box style pans. Unless you are running a dry sump, the box pans are pretty much worthless. The Milodon is a far better pan.

I use 4 bulkhead fittings in the pan so I can run the hoses from the bottom of the distribution tank over to the pan, and then run hoses inside the pan to the main caps. And that’s exactly what you do. The hoses feed each main, from the bottom. The crank is cross drilled so that when the the original oil feed hole is at 12 o’clock (lined up with the cam feed and NOT the main feed) all the oil from the cap goes into the crank and out to the rods. That’s why you need to restrict oil to the cam bearings. You need to force it out to the rods. The oil is there now on time, with full pressure and volume.

So it makes more sense, I’ll say it like this. The oil now goes out of the block and into a remote filter, from the remote filter over to the distribution can, and from there back out to the engine via the 5 hoses out of the bottom of the can. Once the oil gets to the main caps it feeds the mains and rods and the cam bearings/rockers from there. The mains get the oil first, and no oil gets to the lifters. This will oil the rods as high as your check book and valve train can handle.

The guy who came up with the fix, and the guy who paid him to fix it didn’t want everyone and their mother to see it. So he did the system a little differently.

Rather than use a remote filter and an external distribution can, he made up what he called a distribution “tree”. IIRC it was about 1.500 in diameter and was about 3 inches long. One end was drilled for 3/8 pipe and the other end was closed off. Around the diameter he drilled 4 holes for 1/4 pipe.

That was how he fed the mains. How he fed the tree was in pretty ingenious. He drilled into the rear main cap so it breaks into the main feed going out to the filter for 3/8 pipe. He screwed a 3/8 pipe nipple into the cap and used a right angle fitting from the cap to the tree to get oil out to the mains.


There was a big issue I found with this, that didn’t bother the guy who designed it, or the guy who paid for it.

And that issue was that ALL the oil got filtered, but it only filtered HALF the oil, because half the oil went to the filter and half to the mains. It bothered me that every time I serviced the bearings I found trash in them. It drove me nuts. I never had any bearing issues other than trash was in them, but being AR and half nuts, it drove me full nuts.

With the original system, no one would ever know it was there. You ran either a right angle adapter or the plate and no one was the wiser. It just bugged me seeing trash in the bearings all the time.

The other issue with moving it outside the pan, all the fence leaning keyboard tuners want to know what it is, and you have to try and explain it to them. And since they don’t have a clue about oil timing, and have never shifted a car under power above 6500 it makes no sense to them.

If any of this isn’t clear, let me know. I’ll try and define anything I didn’t make clear.

YR