Hey Guys,

I recently torn down the motor and am in the process of rebuilding (just got the block and head back from the machine shop!!!. While waiting for the block and head I broke down the oil pump and cleaned it up. I mic'd all the pieces and everything was spot on with the specs except for the spring. The spring is about nine hundredths of an inch short.

My question is... Can I find this spring anywhere or is it safe to shim? I saw some threads about shimming but never really saw any later responses with results.


Thanks in advance.

If you cant find a replacement then I would shim it if I did anything. That spring is for the pressure relief valve and it only comes into effect at higher rpms. I played around with shimming the spring once and the only difference I noticed was higher oil pressure when doing pulls to the high rpm range. If you had an oil pressure gauge before and were getting good pressure I might would just leave it alone. It is accessible once installed on the car so you can always go back and shim or remove the shim if you need to.

Thanks for the reply... Yeah I have an oil pasture gauge and it was always a normal/sufficient pressure....

Perhaps I will leave it and keep an eye on the gauge...