[John Milner]

Thought I would share a picture of my new oil pump driveshaft that came out of my 428. It is a Melling pump shaft. I just got the engine running the first of April. The first start went well and the engine had plenty of oil pressure and everything was quiet. I drove the car around the block for the first test ride and it went well. I decided to work on the air mixture some on my carb to dial things in better and the car was sitting there idling in my shop. I heard a loud knocking noise, and I immediately killed the engine. Oil pressure was at 0 for about 5 seconds I would estimate. I decided to pull my distributor to check things out as the noise seemed to be coming from the back of the engine. I stuck a screwdriver down the distributor hole to check the pump driveshaft and could turn it about 1/4 of a turn without it even moving the oil pump rotors. So, I pulled the oil pan to find this. I removed and disassembled the oil pump and it was spotless. I didn't see anything in the oil pan that could have went through the oil pickup screen to lock the pump. The pickup screen was spotless. The oil filter was also spotless. The pump still spun fine. The new driveshaft was very slightly taller than the original one and I did not notice that when I assembled the engine. I didn't notice the distributor not sitting flush on the block when it was installed but I am thinking that when I put the distributor hold down clamp on, it must have put the driveshaft in a bind. That or the new driveshaft was simply not heat treated well.

Good news is that the car is running again and the engine was not hurt by this.