First Start Pre lube or not pre lube??

Hi Guys, any thoughts on this, I've fully rebuilt my 996 3.4 engine and used redline rebuild lube on all bearing surfaces etc. If I don't pre lube was going to pull all spark plugs and squirt some oil down the bored then turn over with no compression to build pressure before going for the first start but am wondering , should I pre lube the engine first with a special pre lube kit which I would have to buy or is it an unnecessary expense , I've spent enough already 😁😁

Hopefully Jake Raby will be able to answer your questions when he see's your posting.

imho i would not buy the pre-lube kit. just cranking with plugs in for a bit should do it. squirting oil in the plug holes wont get the oil to all the places....just the bottom....plus you may foul a plug. assembly lube is good,i like to lube the piston assembly and bore with motor oil before going into the block. IF you used a new or known very good oil pump and the motor has not been sitting for a year ...i would crank it until i got a little psi and then fire it up. i do not recommend synthetic oil for break in.

Just for your consideration - whenever I do major engine work, even just head work, I always leave the spark plugs out and turn the engine over with the starter several times to get the oil circulating. In a fully rebuilt engine, the oil passageways are going to be dry and you need to get oil circulating before doing the first full start. Just my way of doing things.

The problem is removing the plugs and pullling the fuel pump fuse and cranking the engine is a bad way to prelube the engine. The starter only spins the engine at some ungodly low RPM and the oil gear pump is inefficient at this low speed. Additionally the hydrodynamic bearings need speed to form the oil film that acts as the bearing and at slow speed the film may not form and metal to metal contact can occur. This is one reason why when the engine first starts the DME takes RPMs to over idle speed to get that pump spinning and oil to the nether regions pronto. For the engines I rebuilt what I did was use an electric drill motor to spin the oil pump and pump oil through the engine before starting. One can't do this with the Porsche engines. My advice then would be to rig up some oil line that connects to the engine at the oil pressure connection and picks up oil from an external source -- a clean small bucket of the proper engine oil and feed pressurized oil through this connection to the engine and its oil passages. The pressure doesn't have to be a lot as you can run the external oil pump -- maybe something driven by a drill motor -- a while to ensure all the oil passages are filled with oil. Thus when you start the engine normally it starts as it will start every time from then on and that is with the oil passages full or nearly full of oil. It is important, used to be and probably still is, once the rebuilt engine starts to keep it running and to keep it running at an elevated RPM to ensure the cam lobes/lifters receive a generous supply of oil so these do not suffer and you end up with a flat cam lobe or a damged lifter bucket. The cam lobe/lifter bucket interfaces are splash lubed in these engines and new parts need plenty of oil to ensure they develop the appropriate surface to provide a long and trouble free service life. After some minutes of this fast running then the engine was shut off the oil was drained and filter was replaced and the engine refilled with fresh oil. The engine was then driven on the street to complete break in.

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+1 Noz1974 - you already have assembly lube on all the parts that need it, this will be fine once the oil has a chance to do it's thing.

I'd personally pull the plugs and fuel pump fuse and crank til you see oil pressure, re-install plugs and fuse and light'er up

Can you attache something to the center port of the oil filter housing and pump oil in?

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Yes and no. The starter spins that slow because it's trying to turn an engine with compression. Take away that compression and it should turn much faster. I wouldn't worry about fluid bearings as they should have some kind of assembly lube which should protect them well enough until the oil pressure is up. Maybe I'm wrong but I've always thought of them as needing oil pressure vs spinning at any one speed. In any event, slow speed without much stress (as in the engine running) shouldn't cause any more harm to them than turning the engine over by hand on a stand or something.

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It's important to check what kind of break in a cam calls for, as well as what the rings need to seat. Again, I'm assuming that the cam and other parts have assembly lube and aren't dry when first turned over.

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Fill the oil filter with oil before installing, pack the M96 oil pump & gears with Vasoline petroleum jelly, I also fill the cam shafts with engine oil during assembly, as the shafts are tubular. Turn key to acc & off several times to allow fuel pump to fill fuel rails with NEW gas. Start engine as usual making sure it fires up quickly & monitor oil pressure. Once oil pressure is good raise rpm to 2000. Most likely excessive wear will occur between cam & followers as this is the highest pressure contact area.

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Not really. While with the plugs in there is compression to overcome this is returned on the other side. Almost all the effort needed to compress a cylinder is returned by the push the piston gets as it goes past TDC and begins the down stroke. Thus the engine won't spin much if any faster with the plugs out than in. All bearing surfaces should be assembled with some assembly lube. Something that protects agains corrosion forming during the assembly process and lubes all bearing surfaces during the first engine start. I was taught to use engine oil but of course the engines I worked on had an oil pump that could be driven by a drill motor working down through where the distributor drive fit. Cam/lifters were lubed by whatever the cam maker supplied with the cam.

Pulling plugs and spinning on the starter will never prime one of these engines properly when it has just been built. I have tried, and tried this with no luck. You'll deplete all of the assembly lube from the components, before the oil pressure builds on the starter. I see people treat this engine improperly all the time. We start the car and shut it off immediately, like in a split second of hearing the first combustion cycle. I do this 5-6 times before I note the oil light on the dash no longer illuminating, then I fire it up and let it run. I do NOT fill the filter with oil first. Doing this requires that air push the oil through the filter. Remember, the oil filter in the M96 is AFTER the oil pump, so it will not help with priming to fill it with oil. Its tough to have air push the oil through the filter. Instead, let the filter fill as the air is bled through the oil system.

good info Jake. can't remember if you went over this on the course. I don't have it in my notes....glad you covered this.

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Ditto for me! I have always gotten 80 psi within 30 seconds of engaging starter.

I'm pretty sure it was not covered in the course but now we know what's the best. Thanks Jake.

Thanks Jake , is there any mileage in using something like a melling pre lube system which forces oil in from a pressurised tank through one of the gallery entries like the oil pressure switch hole, I have used plenty of assembly lube and oil but was worried about the bores getting dry as it seems to only needs the piston to go up and down once and the rings clear away all the oil you put on, hopefully enough has soaked into the pourous lokasil !!

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Interested in the bit about the oil filter pre-fill...what engine does NOT have the oil filter post-pump? why does a M96 struggle here vs every other engine? Cheers,

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That's what it's there for, and you're not going to jump on the throttle anyway off the bat so it should be fine following his first startup instructions.

Not a Porsche engine, but my dad and I would pack the oil pump with some kind of grease so it's primed ready to go on a newly rebuilt engine. We of course use assembly lube on everything too. -Jason

Ok a few people saying about packing oil pump with grease, I just got assembly lube and oil in there at the moment but may open it up. Does this help the pump draw the first bit of oil through and also protect the pump?

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I'm under the impression that most engines' oil pick up comes from the filter.

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every (wet sump) engine I know is, oil sump to pump to filter to 'engine'... dry sump is similar, oil 'sump' to scavenge pump to tank to pressure pump to filter(and most always a cooler) to engine

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This may help, since these engines are so expensive and starting them up for the first time a bit scary - if for no other reason than doubts and second guessing. Go through your check list one more time to double make sure everything has been done. Then walk away and have a friend start it up and follow Rabys process. =)

Yeah deffo need the Valium on that day !!

Yeah it always nerve racking on a first start-up of a fresh engine. -Jason

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I think the idea of the grease is to provide a seal in a dry pump to permit it to pull the air/oil up through the pickup tube and supply oil to the engine. Without some lube in the pump, it may not create enough suction to pull the oil up. I suppose it would also protect the pump from scoring but that is not the primary purpose IMO.

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Exactly, basically priming it. -Jason

Jake What do you think about packing pump with grease to prime it?? I have rebuild lube and some oil in there but haven't packed it with grease, could this be a problem for the pump to pickup on initial start or should it be ok?? Thanks Lee

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The oil jets that spray oil into each cylinder will see that the cylinders/pistons get oiled. The concern is not so much the piston/rings/cylinders run dry but the cam lobe/lifter bucket faces run low on oil. These are very far away from the oil pump so priming the engine oil system to have the oil passages full of oil is very important. There is only a very small line of contact between the cam lobe and the lifter bucket face when the valve is fully open. The PSI is very high at this contact line. Using the right assembly lube and ensuring the oil system passages are full of oil and keeping RPMs up to ensure sufficient oil supply at the top end and sufficient splash lube of the cam lobes and lifter buckets is critical. Along with everything else...

Thanks macster!! Do you think my pump will pick up ok with assembly lube in it or should I open it and pack with grease, engine is in ready to go although no heat shields or bumper on yet so can prob get at it with some fiddling???

The best thing to prime an oil pump with, is vaseline. That said, if you follow what I outlined early in this thread, you'll have oil pressure to all internal components in less than 15 seconds, and the engine will have full film lubrication. We do this around 100 times per year, its not hypothetical, its real, and it works.

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At the risk of being accused of being wise after the fact Vaseline is what I recall being told to use to ensure the oil pump gears pull oil up from the sump and what I used on the engines I rebuilt. For pistons, rings, plain bearings, cam chains, hydralic lifters I used engine oil. I forget or maybe never knew why one didn't use grease. Maybe to avoid the risk of fouling the hydraulic lifters or perhaps regular grease is just too thick and may not be as effective in getting the pump to get that initial flow of oil going. For hydraulic lifters I put them in a container of clean engine oil and a wooden dowel pushed them until they pumped up, were full of oil. This can help you identify a bad lifter before you install it in the engine. For the cam lobes and lifter bucket faces I used what the cam maker recommended. When installing a factory cam I forget what I used. I never encountered an engine like the Porsche engine one in which one couldn't spin the oil pump without having the engine spin. One could drive the oil pump with a drill motor and an adapter and this is how I was taught to pre-lube a new/rebuilt engine and the technique I used. As I said earlier I'd look into an external pump you could drive with a drill motor and that would get fed from a container of fresh oil and feed oil to the engine through an oil pressure port/connection on the engine block. I'd run this pump to fill all the oil passages and plain bearings with oil. If there wasn't a 2nd place to feed oil to the engine I'd use a T fitting and connect an oil pressure gage to one leg of the T and monitor oil pressure. I do not know how much oil pressure you'll manage to get. It depends upon the external pump you select and how fast and with how much power you can drive it. I recall using a half inch drill motor and while it lugged a bit as the oil passages filled with oil and pressure developed the load never stalled the drill motor. I can't recall the pressure obtained but the drill motor told me when the passages were filled with oil and not air. If you don't want to go to this trouble, Jake Raby supplied you with another way to get the engine oiled without having to run the engine at full speed and without the questionable technique of running the engine at the very low cranking speed provided by the starter.

Which will not provide much, if any pre- lube, with this engine. Vaseline is the best to use because it melts just above body temperature, some grease can take 700F to liquify, and if it does';t see that temp its easy to block passages, or prohibit full film oiling of components, especially in the valve train, far away from the pump.

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if you can't push down with a wooden dowel (or whatever) means it's a bad lifter?

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For good old American V8 hydraulic lifers one can push the lifter down, work the lifter in the oil, submerged in the oil, and this pumps up lifter. After a few strokes the lifter gets firm to the point it is impossible to push any more. That's a good sign. The same applies to the Porsche lifters. They operate/work/rely upon the same principles as the V8 lifters The Porsche lifter gets worked submerged in oil until the zero lash adjuster is full of oil and has no air remaining. I just looked at a Porsche lifter to refresh my memory and one may have to work the new lifter submerged in oil by hand. The lifters are a bit different from the good old American V8 lifters. If you find a lifter that doesn't get firm/impossible to work any more but remains "spongy" that's a sign the lifter has a defect and will not pump up properly even in the engine. Bad lifters are (or should be) very rare and I don't expect you'll come across one. The primary benefit is the lifter is fully charged with oil and this helps the engine fire up sooner and run better after its first start. Hydraulic lifters are hard to lube properly in the engine as they require movement to bring the oil feed hole into alignment with the oil groove that feeds oil into the interior of the lifter bucket and the zero lash adjuster. It is best if the lifter starts out charged with oil. Of course it may not remain charged with oil as the engine is assembled and some valves are open and there is force pushing down on the lifter bucket. This will force out some oil but at least there is a nice coating of oil on all the working surfaces and the lifter should pump up very quickly upon engine start.

Works for tensioners too.

is that a wok with oil in it?

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^Mmmm stir fry^

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Guess where he learned that.... I prefer a fry daddy. Every work station and clean room here has a fry daddy in the corner.

And the recommended temperature for pumping up lifters?

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can you explain the reasoning? it doesn't look like I can move the piston on any of the lifters but my mechanic friend said that doesn't mean much at all.

As the prime oil warms up, and the internals of the lifters do as well, air pockets inside the lifters bleed away and they are replaced with oil. When the engine fires up, the lifters are immediately primed using this method, as long as you don't wait too long after the "frying" to install them, and fire the engine up.

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Not a Wok because you want a flat surface big enough for 1 bank of lifters.

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It just means the adjuster is full of oil and the one way check valve which is inside at one end of the sleeve that presses against the bucket is apparently holding the oil inside the adjuster which is what it is supposed to do. Granted you can't generate as much force with your finger as the adjuster experiences when the engine is running but it is comforting to know the adjuster at least can hold oil well enough you can't manually compress it. The zero lash adjuster is intended to be filled with oil and kept filled to effect a zero lash (hence its name) or zero clearance between the end of the zero lash adjuster that is pressed down by the bucket and the other end which is in contact with the tip of the valve stem. If the adjuster bleeds/leaks too much oil when the valve is opened then it may develop some clearance and the next time the cam lobe comes around the bucket will have some clearance between it and the top of the adjuster or there will be clearance between the adjuster and the tip of the valve stem and as this clearance is taken up as the cam lobe continues to turn and press down on the bucket there will be a ticking noise.

Based on my estimate (from an opened engine case and dip stick position), the oil pump gears should be completely (albeit barely) submerged in the engine oil so probably it doesn't matter if you grease the oil pump gears or not? In fact, I wonder if one should overfill the engine by a quart or so to ensure good oil pickup at first start and drain the excess afterwards.

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If you follow the directive I stated earlier in this thread, you'll achieve oil pressure very fast. I never overfill these engines, doing so has no pros, and many cons. You guys are over thinking this.

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Over thinking is typical rennlist

just start the sucker......THIS YEAR ....BEFORE THE RINGS STICK

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Jake, would this be recommended or beneficial to starting up after being in storage for 3-4 months?

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Well, it is hard when you have that much money tied up in a engine project that's starting up for the first time after hours and hours of time spent putting it together and then finally in the car...

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Until your efforts create an issue that would otherwise not exist. I see it all the time. Being too reserved and conservative can make the really important things be overlooked..

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Yes, and being overly confidant can also cause things to be missed.

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True, but thats not something you'll have to worry about for the first decade of engine building. Today when I get an engine ready to fire up for the first time, I walk away. I come back to it the next day, no matter how badly I want to hear it fire up I will do this. When you build an engine the uneasy feeling in your stomach should always be there just before it fires, and the chill should go up your spine the first time you hear it bust off. If neither of these occur, you don't have "it". I may do a first start for you guys and video it the way that we do it. You'll see just how easy it is when you do things as I have stated in this post. We've already fired up both the engines that we had slated to test fire this week, so it'll take two weeks before the next couple are completed and ready to fire up. I did a first start on an engine I personally built for a 600K$ Porsche, I treated it the same way I have prescribed in this post, even though it wasn't an M96. It got oil pressure in less than 3 quick starts, and pegged the gauge as soon as it fired up.

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Hi Jake, Wondering if you could clarify what you meant here...or was it a brain-fart? Cheers,

Clarify what? It looks pretty clear to me.

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You made a bold point that the m96 has its oil filter after the pump and as such can't prime itself...so I'll ask again, what engine does NOT have its filter after the pump, and how come a lack of priming ability is unique to the m96?

I can totally see that. If you pre-fill oil in the oil filter, there's a lot of air trapped between the pump and the filter. As the oil pump starts pumping, the trapped air will need to be compressed first before the oil in the filter will get pushed up to the main bearings. That takes time. Kinda like getting air trapped in your brake system. If not pre-filled, the oil simply gets pumped solidly from the pump to the filter with no resistance as the air is purged through the filter and the rest of the oil passages. Oil will get to the parts faster.

Pretty much you'll only find filtration pre- pump on industrial engines. I was simply restating and making it clear that the oil system pumps the oil through the filter, and its not a scavenge system that pulls the oil through the filter. This is why ore- filling an oil filter on a freshly built, never fired engine is a bad idea, as you have an air filled system between the pump and the filter, and in the case of the M96, this is a long, complex pathway to have filled with air. Doing this will dramatically increase the time it takes for the engine to achieve oil pressure, as the system can bleed the air quickly, and fill the filter quickly if the bleeding of the system occurs progressively. I do the same thing with aircooled engines that have large external oil systems, with coolers, and larger filters employed. People try to outsmart the scenario by filling the filter with oil, they don't know what they don't know, and that increases the priming time of the entire oil system by at least 2-3 X more than if the filter was installed dry. Been there, done that, and compared it before. Whats unique about the M96 is where the pump is placed in regard to the oil level in the engine, and the circuitry leading to the pump from the oil pick up tube. Thats why you'll pull the DME relay, and spark plugs, and crank on it till the battery dies before you'll get oil pressure on a freshly built M96 engine. The whole time the assembly lube has been wiped away from all the surfaces, and you put thousands of miles worth of wear on the internals before it even saw combustion the first time.

Thank-you for your clarification. My experience on from simple oil changes to extended sits to fresh build's is the opposite....also not sure how a small air-oil purge causes greater lag then a empty oil canister(large volume) needing filled...basic hydraulics. With no plugs, there is virtually no cylinder/bearing load and the spin RPM is higher(vs with plugs), while 'light' starting the engine sees much higher cylinder loads and introduces fuel...the only thing seeing a consistent load is the valvetrain, and the pump pushes the same volume per revolutions(ie, not a variable-displacement pump), with some potential lose of efficiency at low rpm Anyhow, everyone use what they are confident in and works for them... Cheers,

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Don't confuse the first time starting of a fresh engine with what occurs during an oil service. Two vastly different scenarios. I do more engine builds than oil services!

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No doubt there, absolutely agree.