[grivera]

Originally Posted by Sirrotica

FWIW, thinking about it last night, if the crank counter weight was interfering with the oil pump driveshaft, it would be timed with the timing chain and gears. The shaft would only hit at a specific time causing only a portion of the shaft to be polished, which it is only polished on one spot. It can't hit the counterweight for a full revolution as the counter weight is roughly flat on half 50% of the circle.

Now the driveshaft is turning at half the speed of the crank due to the 2 to 1 ratio of the timing chain, making the spot rubbing maybe 25% of the circumference of the driveshaft.

Going from memory, I seem to recall that could be what I saw when the shaft was photographed. I know it may be a long shot, but the known noise is somewhere in the drive of the distributor and oil pump area, and hitting the counterweight would make a noise that was intermittent each revolution of the crank. It would also explain the driveshaft only being polished in one spot. If the long shot I dreamed up is correct the interference would be very slight. I don't know if that crank residing in the engine presently is an aftermarket crank, (since its a 467 based on a 400 block it almost has to be) but we all know the chi coms have been known to manufacture parts without the utmost in quality control.

This may be something, or it may be nothing, I just want this to be put to bed. The oil pump shaft only being polished in a small area still sticks in my mind, and I think it is interfering with some other internal engine part that isn't stationary.

There you go, a possible cause, I could be totally wrong, but there is a small chance I could be right. If the oil pump shaft was put back together 180 degrees from where it was initially in this last disassembly, it should now have 2 polished spots on it, if it happened to be put back in the original position it would still only have one spot.

It would also explain why when replacing the oil pump and shaft in the first go around, the noise persisted. One other thing is an oil lite bushing is pretty benign due to it softer nature and for only being circulated for a minimal amount of time in the engine it seemed to do quite a bit of damage to wear surfaces, (bearings rings cylinder walls) usually reserved to steel or iron circulating through an engine, not oil lite bearing material.

Anyway something to check out, since the obvious things have mostly been checked out by this time.

I believe Paul used a factory 455 crank