Changing oil pumps, how to prime it

[severach]

I wouldn’t prime the pump with the engine started or not. Too much trouble when the pump fails to prime and you don’t know it.

I hooked up a drill to brand new dry pump install and primed for several minutes and no resistance. Seems like an oil pump should give a bit of resistance. Having never done this before I assumed something was wrong with me. Am I turning the right way? Then I loosened the oil filter to see if oil was moving and tried it again with my assistant watching underneath. Thinking I’d see the same as before I prime full blast only to hear a bunch of hollering about a face full of oil. I tighten the oil filter and now the drill can’t turn the pump at all. An oil pump gives plenty of resistance when working properly.

Turns out a dry pump can’t push enough air to overcome a dry oil filter. Once the pump is wet with oil it can push air through anything. Engine Assembly Lube is what you're supposed to use. No reason to fool around with grease.

It would have been a catastrophe had I primed with the engine thinking that the pump would prime “real soon now” and “maybe the oil light is broken.”

 

[7055]

Engine assembly lube is grease I thought, either way that's what I meant when I said grease.

If you do an oil change all the oil is going to drain out of the pump and it has to push through a dry filter. So I imagine if you just poured a little oil in the pump it would be the same results as starting it after an oil change. Worked for me. I could see that it was sucking up oil during cranking.