350 HO Deluxe Engine 19210008

[RHO]

On this engine there are two valve cover caps, one on the front driver's side and one on the front passenger side. Neither are marked Oil/add oil/oil viscosity as normally seen. Trying to determine which is used for adding the oil.
The passenger side cap is smaller and it appears to be a plug but driver's side cap has those little holes/screens on the underside of the rim and does not fit tight like the other cap.
And, is this really a 4-quart oil pan capacity engine?
Thanks.

 

[zora]

So you are not running a PCV system. Typically oil fill is drivers side and passenger is breather.
The pan is 4 quarts plus the filter, a 5 quart engine.

 

[RHO]

Thanks. This engine as delivered appears to just have a plug in the hole where it would be located. Interesting this engine also does not require vacuum advance, relying only on the internal centrifugal advance. Seems to be popular engine. Saw the same engine being installed in a '62 Rambler on the car show "Iron Resurrection."

 

[RHO]

Now that I have this particular engine home and did some looking at the valve cover plugs on both sides, I'm just not sure the driver's side is where the oil is added on this specific engine. (Note, I do have four other cars with Chevy engines from 1979 to 1996 and indeed the oil filler caps are on the Driver's side.)
This engine came with a rubber plug on the Driver side valve cover but sometime during the two years the car was at a restoration shop, the rubber plug was replaced with a metal airbreather type Mr. Gasket cap for unknown reasons at this time. When I pull that new cap off there is no room at all to insert a funnel and I just see metal plates of some sort with VERY little open space for oil to flow.
On the passenger side when I remove that metal plug there is indeed a deep hole where a funnel could certainly be inserted, but again I'm not used to the passenger side being where the oil goes in.
Does it matter which side?
Thanks

 

[zora]

It doesn't matter which side you add oil but it sounds like whomever worked on this engine reversed the valve covers. The metal plates you see are oil baffles. If you run a PCV system the breather has to be on the passenger side due to the direction of crankshaft rotation.

 

[RHO]

Contrary to what I had thought I had observed in previous pictures, yea verily there is a PCV valve with vacuum hose attached to it on top of the passenger side valve cover just above the oil dipstick (so on the rear half of the valve cover). In further investigation of this, I believe the restoration shop (who only installed the crate motor engine as delivered) removed the rubber plug that was there on delivery and substituted an oil breather cap there on the driver side. I saw pictures on line of this engine from various supplies and they all pretty consistently showed the rubber grommet on the driver side front half of the valve cover. When I just found a pdf with the engine parts listed I was able to look up the number of the chrome plug on the passenger side and indeed it is a push-in oil filler cap. So I guess in summary the shop added the oil breather cap in place of a rubber grommet and the oil filler cap is indeed on the passenger side (which is different than four other Chevy 350 engines I have in other cars). It makes sense now. It would have been extremely difficult to add oil from the driver side on this engine.
Parts list for this engine:
141630 oil fill cap
141615 PCV & breather
66035 valve cover breather was not on the car but just had the rubber plug. A Mr. Gasket oil breather cap was substituted.
Thanks