I am in the process of getting a freshly rebuilt ready to fire up and upon priming the oil I can only get oil up to the valley, but not up to the heads. There is a heavy stream of oil gushing out of a hole next to where the distributor sits and it comes out with a lot of flow, but also seems to have a lot of air in it too. Upon inspection of the 390 that I removed I see that that hole, as well as the two along the top on the back side of the engine appear to have plugs in them.

Are these ports supposed to be blocked off and the engine builder forgot to do this? It would not be the first thing that I found that was out of whack given that the gasket at the oil filter adapter did not have any holes in it to let the oil in and out of the filter. I only found that out after pumping the darn thing with the drill for a while and getting nothing.

Any info would be appreciated.

 

You are correct, there is a plug that needs to go there.

 

A press in plug or a NPT plug goes there!

 

Nice. Any idea where I can get these plugs and are there any other things I need to be looking at with respect to the oiling system to make sure things got done correctly?

 

also make sure your rocker shaft supports have the correct bolts . one on each head is smaller in shaft diameter so oil can travel up it to supply the rockers , wrong bolt = no oil to rockers

 

I do know for sure that those are correct as we took off the heads and replaced the weak stock springs and upgraded them and the retainers when we changed out the cam.

My concern now is that if they left out these plugs, are there other plugs that I need to know about and look for? Been searching the site and have not found a list of where all these "plugs" are supposed to be. I did see the one on the back of the camshaft when we swapped the flexplate over, so I know that that one is there.

 

i just installed mine on the 390 i am rebuilding
there's 2 in the back by camshaft plug
1 in front right behind distributer hole
then like 5 on top by lifters, pretty sure its 5 maybe 4
if you need them easy way to find them is ebay and ford fe freeze plug kit
here's a link to a good pic
Milodon 34036 Freeze Plug Kit Brass Ford Big Block FE 3 | eBay

 

Well I took the darn thing back apart and they missed all the "press in" caps in the system, but at least they got the screw-in ones. Amazing how good the oil flows with the holes plugged up. Thanks for the info guys.

BTW, I can see how easy it would be to miss the one at the distributor if you are not looking for it.