What do you guys see for oil pressure? My old 97 engine with 233k miles had 60+ cold, 50 hot and 30 at idle hot.
I wish my L29 had oil pressure like that. Mine is actually on the low side particularly at hot idle, but not so far gone that I'm motivated to pull the engine and deal with it.
I suppose I should plug in a known-good mechanical gauge to verify.
I even put in two of the drilled pipe plugs in the front oil gally to oil the timing set.
The vented plugs are not intended to oil the timing set, which gets plenty of oil otherwise. Any oil they squirt on the chain/sprockets is incidental.
And that's with 10w-30 oil too.
Try the 5W-30 GM recommends.
I have two of the oiler plugs behind the cam gear.
Again, the vented plugs are for purging air in the oil gallery at startup to reduce lifter ticking when the engine is first lit. Any oil they squirt after that is just by-product of the primary purpose.
Try 5W-30.
the dizzy gear does not get direct oiling, so I cut a .030 slot on the bottom of the dizzy housing to direct some oil to the dizzy/cam gears
The dizzy gear does get direct oiling, from the leakage between the distributor housing and the block. Cutting a groove (no o-rings) or drilling a small vertical hole in the housing aligned with the two gears at more-or-less common distributor position for "typical" initial timing--started when MSD put O-rings on the housing to eliminate the "leakage" in the housing-to-block clearance. The O-rings and the drilling meant that a "metered" jet of oil got sprayed on the two gears, instead of a sorta-random amount based on the clearance around the distributor housing. Excess clearance without the O-rings lowers oil pressure, sometimes considerably.