Chevy 350 oil pressure problem

I'm using a 80-85 chevy 350 engine in a custom car I have built. It was completly rebuilt. Its pretty much standard, except for headers, proformance, intake manifold and carb. I recently tryed to start it several times and it would only run for about a minute or less and stall out. I adjusted the fuel pressure because it was low but it made no difference. Well after starting it about 10 times I started to get a very loud screetching sound. I dropped the engine and discovered a lot of metal in the oil. I removed the intake manifold and the valve covers to discover that it was very dry. I think I had no oil pressure? does anyone know why this might be? Everything is new on the motor and it was rebuilt by a pro company, I couldn't find any obvisous sighns of failure.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing your custom car didn't have an oil pressure gauge so you could catch this problem prior to disaster. There can be a few reasons why you didn't have any oil flow, and all of them should have been mitigated by the engine remanufacturer when they did the work...with the possible exception of actually not adding the oil in since engines have to be shipped dry per federal regs, but a good reman will fill it, prime the oil pump and engine, then drain it prior to shipping.

Possible problems could be a blocked oil passage (maybe from a slipped, flipped, or incorrect head gasket), mispositioned oil sump, or bad oil pump. The engine should have a warranty on it...I think it's time you exercise it.

On the Chevy Small Blocks the gear on the end of the camshaft drives the gear for the distributor which has a male flat slot on the end of it that drives the oil pump, you should be able to pull the distributor out and inspect where these three parts all work together without voiding any warranty the engine has.

But I also agree with darkhorse13 that you should exercise the warranty on the engine.

Sounds like a crank bearing has spun, Bad oil pump, bad set of lifers.:smokin: