The V8 Owners Forum -

My motor is a bit of a hybrid frankenmotor. It's a 4 litre crossbolted block with the 4.6 crank. It's running a Holley carb, so it has a distributor. Therefore it has an old style timing cover with the rubbish oil pump and relief valve of doom. (which has just recently lived up to its name)

As my oil pump housing is looking a bit worse for wear, I wondered if I can fit a crank driven pump.

I believe there is an intermediate timing cover that has the distributor drive and the crank driven oil pump.

I assume my motor must have a different camshaft from an earlier motor to run the distributor so the intermediat case should go on, giving me a better oil pump?

Am I missing anything?

I don't know the histrory of the car so I can't commnet on why I have the old style timing cover, other than it might have just been what they could find?

As crude as the oil pump is...in good order and once primed, they do work.

I suspect you'll do a lot of hunting to find the parts to actually change to that intermediate setup. When I did a 4.6 many years ago I had wanted to...but then realised it was just a nightmare to actually get the parts. And that's when they were still available.
So I just stuck with my old dizzy and front end setup, just needed to use a crank spacer under the bolt as the nose of the crank is longer than the old setup.

Clean up the relieve valve and it's bore and go from there.

The intermediate cover came on 96-98 3.9 discovery. I am using one on my new 4.6, to replace the 96 3.9 I have currently. Before the intermediate covers were available a known upgrade done locally was to splice the lower half of a holden/Buick v6 front cover onto the rover top half.

stevieturbo wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 9:17 am As crude as the oil pump is...in good order and once primed, they do work.

I suspect you'll do a lot of hunting to find the parts to actually change to that intermediate setup. When I did a 4.6 many years ago I had wanted to...but then realised it was just a nightmare to actually get the parts. And that's when they were still available.
So I just stuck with my old dizzy and front end setup, just needed to use a crank spacer under the bolt as the nose of the crank is longer than the old setup.

Clean up the relieve valve and it's bore and go from there.

Yeah, thought they'd be in demand!

I think my pump has the longer gears anyway and I've just checked the clearance. Despite looking rough it's 3 thou so not too bad.