The irony of all of this is that I met Mark through a correspondence via E-bay regarding a BMC factory experimental dry sump system he had for sale. I was fascinated.
It drives off of a separate gear on the otherwise standard camshaft toward the front of the block, and is quite ingenious in its layout. Seeing as Project '64 is not running a distributor, but maintains a stock camshaft to drive the factory oil pump, I see no reason they couldn't use the stock distributor drive to operate an external pump as a supplement to the standard internal pump. Use the stock pump for the bottom end, and the separate pump to take care of the head. This could then direct the oil flow toward the valves to take away heat, which would be huge in a 370 hp turbocharged 1 liter.
But again, regarding the Project '64, this is all speculation.
I think I'm going to try to contact Gary and the guys and invite them to join this discussion. It's a fascinating build, and we seem to have a lot of A-series LSR interest generated here. I'm dying to know what the post mortem tells them.
JMHO, but that 60's era, early style pump has reliability issues of its' own, so I would
NOT recommend using it for this application.
As for driving an oil pump off the standard camshaft distributor drive gear and the intermediate shaft: This results in the same problem as the 60's era pump. The relatively high loads of driving an oil pump, overload the small toothed skew gears cut on the gears mating to the camshaft gears, wearing them out in short order. Every engine that uses this method of driving the oil pump(s) [50's Fiats, MGBs, early MG T series, and others] suffers from the same problem. Another specific BMC example is the "Racing" MGB engine. As soon as the larger, high pressure, high volume, "racing" oil pumps are fitted, the skew drive gears fail. The unpredictable nature of those failures can have "explosive" results.
This is why more "modern" engine designs drive the oil pump(s) off the nose of the crankshaft or a jackshaft. Think Chevy LS or . . . . . Rover K for instance . . . . . .
I'm still of the opinion that a multi-stage, external drive, dry sump oil pump would be the key to increased oil system reliability for this application. Perhaps a billet front cover/cam drive arrangement could incorporate a crank driven oil pump ala Chevy LS or Rover K. Engineering and fitment would not be easy of course. Sounds like a good project for some "down under", under-employed racing engine engineer.
IMO, every engine has its' "Achilles heel", that's just the way it is. Some are just worse do deal with than others. This example is pretty serious.
Fordboy