Anyone ever get a bad Melling Oil pump before?? LONG Story inside

[1987stangman]

Hi everyone. Now that I have my car running and this mess behind me I wanted to throw this out and see how common it is to get a defective oil pump off the shelf and to VENT a little because I am still a tad pissed off about it. To make a seemingly endless story short I will get right to it. I pulled the motor about 2 months ago to rebuild it. I am lucky to also live less than a mile from Thumper Performance so I sent the heads to him to get ported and rebuilt and by the time he was done I was done with the short block and everything was reassembled and the motor was put back into the car. Before I fired it up for the first time I primed the pump with a drill to make sure everything had oil flowing to it. I also had primed it on the stand with a valve cover off prior to installing the upper intake manifold. Motor started right up and idled pretty good, no smoke at all and rings seemed to seat instantly and I had my wife watch the oil and temp gauges while I whipped out the timing light and timed it to 10 deg (for now). I let the motor sit and run for 15 or so min and I noticed the oil pressure dropped quick to ZERO and back up as if someone pulled the sending units wire and put it back on really fast. It did this 3 times and stopped and I thought it strange but it never did it again until I took the car for a spin around the block. I was lucky because as soon as I pulled into the driveway the gauge hit ZERO and stayed. I was pissed so I put it in the garage for the day and worked on it the next. Drained the oil expecting to find some copper from a wiped bearing but found nothing, I even drained it though an auto paint strainer. Pulled the filter and turned the pump shaft with a drill and it barley pushed oil and no oil would come out of the sending unit tube so it was official, bad pump. I was not looking forward to changing it in the car that was for sure but I spent all day Friday doing it. It really sucked but the reward was that the new pump is working great and it seems that no engine damaged occurred, but I only have like 100 miles on it. I was just going to return the pump and get my money back since I already bought a new one from Napa but I e-mailed Milling and explained the situation and they are requesting I send the defective pump back to them.

I know this post was long but getting the oil pump out of a Fox with it in the car is a real PITA!!!

 

[BlownFiveLiter]

Non-technical issue - moved to 5.0 Talk.

Man, that sounds like a nightmare. I swear if I ever have an oil pump go bad, the engine is coming out. No way I'm laying on the ground under the car with oil dripping all over me, so I can change out the pump.

 

[68stang351]

I had one seize one time. It had been in the car several years though. Twisted up the oil pump shaft and broke it. The car is so loud that I had no idea it happened until I got home, I think I drove 3 or 4 miles before I heard it rattling.
I also changed mine in the car, not fun! The motor was ok after that except it would rattle for about 2 seconds on a cold start. It was fine for a year or two, then it started getting worse and worse. I ended up taking it out and putting another motor in. The old one needs a new crank now. A guy wanted to buy it from me the other day for 100$, I think I'll sell it to him.