Good oil pressure but no oil in heads

[fly_25]

So I bought a used V6 for a project and finally finished with the installation, primed the oil with the starter and got good oil pressure on the gauge about 2/3 to max, when I start the car I see no oil flowing through the heads and the valve train looks pretty dry. Even when I rev the engine a little there seems to be no oil to the heads. Oil pressure is still good at idle. Could the oil passages be clogged?

 

[fly_25]

Here's a picture of inside the valve cover, looks a little dry to me and it doesn't change with the engine running

 

[Built6spdMCSS]

Pushrod Engine?

 

[fly_25]

Yes it's the 3.8 V6 that came with these cars

 

[Tony1968]

At minimum I'd pull a valve cover then loosen a rocker to get a look through a push rod. Looks like a lot of caked up nastiness in there

 

[fly_25]

Good idea, I'll try that tomorrow morning and see if I can clean the pushrods

 

[ELCAM]

You need to pull the valve cover and see if there is oil at the first rockers. The oil flows through a passage into the head at the first pedestal for the rocker shaft and then the oil flows through the rocker shaft to the rockers.

Something could be plugged or misaligned or assembled incorrectly blocking the oil flow. Some rocker shaft engines can be assembled with the shafts upside down blocking the oil flow.

 

[fly_25]

Is this true for the V6 or all sbc engines? I thought the oil flows up through the pushrods. Sorry I don't know too much about engines!

 

[ELCAM]

Buick engines have rocker shafts. Chevys are a different design.

Edited to add:

Look at your picture you can see the rocker shaft. All the baked on grunge suggests to me that the oil was changed very infrequently. Later in its life someone likely used diesel fuel, ATF or some mystery stuff in a can to clean it up.
Since you also posted a pic of the bypass valve being damaged (https://gbodyforum.com/threads/what-is-this-and-is-it-still-functional.84832/#post-897073) they ran it till so much crap accumulated in the oil filter it bypassed the oil filter and pumped all the garbage into the oil system.

 

[fly_25]

That makes sense, I hope the engine is okay then. I don't see how the oil can pass through the rocker shaft, am I missing something here?