This will be a bit of a witch hunt. Maybe I will get lucky and something will just fall out in my hand, but I doubt it. It's been like this for literally years .

If you put your cap bearings on the block side, you'd have known it within minutes of fire up.

That's what I figured as well.

And I don't think you can put them on and end up with partial covering, can you? I think if you get them on wrong, you completely occlude the oil feed hole. I haven't been in there in many moons however, so memory is quite fuzzy.

Well good luck with the investigation and keep us posted! It's just so odd to be on the other side of the fence. You so often hear people complain about low oil pressure. How often do you hear the opposite!

Old post I know,  it did you ever figure out what was wrong?