Hey all

My friend and I have been trying to get his Malibu back on the road.The way this all started was he ran over a 4/4 in the road. So we know he chunked his timming chain guides. We chanaged all that out and figered the oil pump was toast which allowed slack in the timming chain to take out the guides.Now all we need to do is get it all back together but we cant find out anything on how to prime the oil system...?

 

what motor?

 

duh,sorry...its the 2.4

 

Its not the typical Chevy with the spring you turn.We can see from taking the oil pump off there's is a chain going up and connecting to the crank shaft,it would seem the only way to prime it would be to start the engine but without the oil pressure going through the chain tensioner the timing chain would be to slack and would skip on the sprockets messing the timing up.I am sure there's a way to somehow manually prime the system I just have no idea how to do it

thank you for your time

 

Just fill it with oil and start it, it will pickup oil right off. If your still worried, remove the sparkplugs, and with ignition disable, crank it over for 20 seconds. I never do that, I just fill it with oil and start it.

 

if you reset the tensioner properly, the chain should be pretty tight before start-up. The tensioner works like a ratchet. It will only go out so far, and not return until compressed from the fully extended position. When you remove it, compress it fully to lock it in the compressed position. Install it so the chain is loose. Once everything is installed, depress the plunger with a screwdriver and it should ratchet out to make the chain tight. Ratate the crankshaft twice, and re-check timing to make sure all is good. If you try to start when it is loose, it may not extend because it is locked in the compressed position and cause a nasty rattle and maybe jump a tooth. I know this because i did it on the first chain I did like this.