Discrepancies in information on LA and Magnum series oil gallery plugs

Kern Dog said
I see your point but did you see the channel in the thrust plate?

View attachment 1716402883

The plate from the 318 that also had no plugs:

View attachment 1716402884

See, the second plate appears to fully block off the flow rendering the plugs to be redundant. The first plate has that open space that surely allowed oil to flow under the plate and down the front of the block.
Again, I’m not claiming to know it all here, I’m trying to make sense of it.
Here is a closer look:

View attachment 1716402885

I don’t know when they started using the plate with the relief in it.

My best WAG is Chrysler was trying to get more oil to the timing cover area so they put that relief in there. The bolt with the hole in it (if it came with one because some engines came with them and some didn’t and my dad told me in 1980 when we took mine apart and it had the bolt that some didn’t have the bolt and if you wanted one you could run to he dealer and buy one…and IIRC he said it was 30 cents or something…of course that would have been in the 1966-1977 time frame), and the drip tray were IMO efforts to get more oil on not only the timing set but on the fuel pump arm and eccentric.

I’ve seen many pump arms and eccentrics that were are up and Thats only from lack of oil.

One more thing on the bolt. I’ve seen the bolts get clogged with crapola that finds its way into the low spot thats supposed to feed it.

I always use 2 part epoxy or JB Weld and fill that low spot in so oil and trash can’t get caught and pile up in there. I also fill in the drain holes that put oil back on the middle of the crank. If I remember tomorrow I’ll take a couple of pictures of that and post them in this thread.

Clearly, if you have the plate with the relief and you out the plug in the gallery you’ve defeated the purpose of the relief.

If you try and make sense out of what Chrysler was doing back then you’ll end up in a rubber room lol. I gave up trying to figure them out long ago.

Just because I’m curious, are you using solid or hydraulic lifters?