Possible cause of oil starvation? Yes I think so.
On removing the bearing caps all the shell bearings were completely shot. After conferring with the owner It was agreed that I remove and strip down the engine to assess it and more delights were revealed: Scored bores, pistons, crank journals and oil pump, various bits missing from the external of the engine such as strengthening plates, spacer bobbins, bolt heads snapped off:
Silicone sealer oozing out from the mating surfaces of various components, second hand gaskets, cambelt practically hanging off:Some old piece of water pipe from another car with the wrong angle on it was hardly going to let the cooling water flow very well.
One of the blanking bungs for the gearbox was badly mangled and rolling up and down the dashboard, why this had been removed we'll never be entirely sure, to fill the gearbox with oil maybe? Either way it never made it back to where it previously lived as a bit of rag had been stuffed in there instead.
Best of all, one lobe from each of the cams partially missing. Only just worn like this? Nope, the corresponding shim was about as thick as my house doorstep so the builder must or should have known.
Apart from having a few stripped threads the head looked ok, although some muppet had replaced the Sodium filled valves with Stainless steel ones more suited to a naturally aspirated engine. Apart from the basic block and head the engine had been reduced to scrap. The block had been painted quite nicely though.
After much more conferring, a spec was agreed on and the task of rebuilding it properly began. Basically it was to be running stock power for now, but with uprated components built into the block so it could be safely modified by 'bolt ons' at a later date when funds allowed.
New steel rods and forged pistons were specced, a checked good used crank had its journals polished, core plugs knocked out and was left in the dip & strip tank for a few hours before being high pressure washed and dried off. It was mated to a new steel flywheel, paddle clutch with high pressure plate and sent off for balancing along with the pistons and rods. I have found the OE cranks to be quite well balanced from the factory and only needing a bit of a tickle here and there on the counterweights to make them perfect, they do however need all the other components bolting to them and balancing properly by someone who has the right equipment and knows how to use it. The steel flywheels we sell are already balanced, but clutch pressure plates rarely are and need a fair amount of attention.
Whilst that was being done the block was being decked, bored and honed. I specify that the boring and honing is done with a deck plate, main bearing caps in place and torqued down to the correct settings. For the little extra time and effort involved you might aswell try and get things as perfect as possible. When all the components were back with us and thoroughly cleaned a dry build was done and all clearances set and checked. It is folly to simply assume that everything has been done properly, isn't worn or will be ok. This calls for a good collection of tools such as bore clock, micrometers, dial gauge, feeler gauges and Plastigauge. 
Pistons are hand finished by us, ARP bolts used on the new rods. The block also had the balancer shafts removed and all associated oilways etc blocked off with our own kit, much has been discussed about this modification, my thoughts are this:Balancer shafts
People talk about "2nd order alternating inertial forces" quoting it from the Lancia manual or some online text without knowing exactly what it means, the best explanation I have ever come across is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_shaft
To simplify what they are saying is that in a four cylinder engine the pistons aren't in exactly the opposite places at the same time in the four stroke cycle so can't cancel out the forces caused by each other. There will always be some vibration, but the engine is mounted on floppy rubber bushes so will you feel it? Not really.
As outlined in the aforementioned article, the two litre capacity is borderline size for needing balancer shafts. So the advantage of BS on an otherwise unmodified engine is just singularly to reduce some vibration of a not completely properly balanced production engine and no more.
What about the advantages of removal? Well the centre bearing shells are no longer available and when worn will leak oil reducing the overall oil pressure, removing, blocking these and the other associated oilways off will see a big improvement in oil pressure and reliability.
There is an increase in engine power and response. Servicing is easy and cheaper due to less belts and bearings. Reliability goes up due to increased oil pressure and less moving parts to fail.
Interestingly the balancer shafts changed weight over the years, the last ones used in the Fiat Coupe were different compared to of the early ones in the 8v, this was done by machining more or less out of shaft along its length which must have altered its balance too, I do wonder why...
Knocking out old bearing shells:
Pulling in new bungs with appropriate tool: 
The block was completed with a new oil and water pump The head was stripped, inspected and cleaned as per the block, valves lapped and re-shimmed with some good used cams. There wasn't any point in going overboard with the head as it was going to be replaced with something a bit more fruity in the future. Pretty soon it was finished and ready to go in: 
Once in, fitted and turned over until we had some oil pressure showing it fired up first time. More 1970s garden-shed tuning then came to light, It was running really rich, the fuel pressure regulator had been tampered with and the pressure was sky high, the boost gauge was also showing 1.2 bar when it should be 1 bar on overboost with the stock chip it had in it, once sorted it ran like a dream, lovely and smooth - vibration? Forget it, do the job properly and you can sling your balancer shafts in the bin.The guys smile when they came to pick it up made it worthwhile, they plan on running it in then just getting some use out of it on the road and doing some sprints. More modification will follow when needed, but just for now they were happy to get the car back with a good reliable strong bottom end.
