oil press WAY TO HIGH during prime

Man - you are lucky that you didn't have that thing all buttoned up and in the car. Good catch, and great advice from everyone, especially about dissecting the filter to ensure that it didn't blow apart internally and push debris into the oil galleries. You might also want to look at the rocker shafts to ensure you didn't blow the welch plugs out of the ends.

I normally use high volume, not high pressure pumps in new performance rebuilds, 50 to 60 PSI is plenty, but it is nice to have more oil to go around IMO.