PUSH RODS CHEWED UP?.

OK this is the motor that was freshened up this last winter. Rings bearings the normal deal. The only things different was the correct 1.73 rocker arms (use from Jon) and a new cam from Lem. Thats it. Well we made 13 runs on the throttle stop deal and did the normal minor checks. We checked the Valve lash after the first 4 runs and the left side was ok. The right side had a few that needed some adjustment no more than .003. So today I drove that car off the stop to see why the kids reaction time sucked so bad and ended up going rounds. after 4 rounds we noticed some abnormal engine noise and right after the run i jump out and pulled the right cover and found one valve maybe .003 out. put the cover back on and headed for the lanes but the noise was still there. Well at one time there was a exhaust probe in the #1 pipe and my kid noticed the pop rivet was gone so I just passed it off as exhaust noise. Made one more run (lost -.020 red) and mainly I was uncomfortable with what was going on. So get the car home and get the cover off and started checking valve lash and notice most of them were to tight (?) and one .013 loose. So I rip the intake off looking for a bad roller lifter and found nothing. But there is metal on the magnets I have in the lifter valley. So I remove all the rocker arms and push rods and lifters and found several push rod tips chewed up. Now this is not from lack of oil. So with all the metal I think I need to pull the motor out and look at all the bearing and oil pump. What do you guy's think?

Ace

if you reset the lash hot it would close up when cooled off.if it's oiling the top end it should'nt have issues.i guess you spun the pump with a drill to check?

RIght after I made that pass and took off the right side i found a few that were tight. But didn't have the time to relash them as they were calling us back to the lanes to be paired up. I normally set may lash Cold and between .003-.004 tight. I know when it warms up they get loose. I'm more worried about tearing the bottom end down now. Man I hate to have to re-ring this thing.

Ace

powerstrokeace wrote:RIght after I made that pass and took off the right side i found a few that were tight. But didn't have the time to relash them as they were calling us back to the lanes to be paired up. I normally set may lash Cold and between .003-.004 tight. I know when it warms up they get loose. I'm more worried about tearing the bottom end down now. Man I hate to have to re-ring this thing.

Ace

i would'nt rering it unless i found a problem with the rings.what part of the p/r is chewed up?

Have you checked the springs?

X2 Dave and how was the lifter/rocker that the chewed up pushrod was in?

The rocker cup looks ok. It's mostly the push rod end but the lifter end as well. I have plenty of spring clearance. This is what kept me up all night. Old cam was a Lunati as well as the lifters. New cam is a Comp and new Lunati lifters. Now the oil channel in the Lunati lifter is roughly .015 smaller and .100 lower than the comp lifter oil channel. Now I wondering what base circle Lunati and Comp grind in there cams.I ran in to something like this years ago with a small block car. Switched cams from a solid to a roller and it had a smaller base circle and it cut oil flow off to the lifters. There a modification you perform to the lifters to cure this.

NO I didn't PRIME the motor with a tool and check this. So I will put the lifters back in and dump the oil (strain it for particles)back in and do this. I have a fresh set of Comp lifters on the shelf to compare this with. And the block doesn't have lifter bushings

Ace

I've only had that happen one time.I replaced the lifter/pushrod and it's never happened since. I just took it to be poor oiling to that one on startup. If all the lifters were wrong you would think all would look the same.

I've had to replace pushrods before because of chipping on the ends,but they never lost any lash. Just caught them starting to come apart early. But , I never had anymore trouble after that,and the pushrods were old. If you lost more than .010 lash ,you got a problem I think. I'd be checking everything real close..Good luck

What springs are you running and how old are they? Some of Lems cams are pretty aggressive.

Here's a good read. http://www.mooregoodink.com/news/?p=3225

Are the pushrods rubbing against the pushrod holes? Are the guideplates aligned?

Charlie

I once had a run of bad luck with Cleveland pushrods chewing/chipping the tips. They were Manley 3/8 pushrods with Crane gold roller rockers.

I got a lot of different suggestions back then to fix the problem, most didn't help. What did stop the damage was a combo of polishing the pushrod tips & pushrod cups in the rocker arms, combined with lubeing the contact point between the tip & the cup with black moly hyd/solid cam breaking lube before their first use.

Don't really know why it helped stop the damage. Only thing I can figure is polishing the two mating surfaces might have reduced the friction a given amount during the initial break-in run.

c.evans wrote:Are the pushrods rubbing against the pushrod holes? Are the guideplates aligned?

Charlie

My thought too? Are the pushrods binding and causing the rocker to skip across the pushrod tip?

OK I'm going to get razzed for this. In the past I've used nothing but Comp cams lifters. This motor came with the car and had the Lunati roller lifters. I talked with Lem today and we talked about base circles and then lifters. He said some thing about 90˚ for the oil hole on Comps and 180˚ for the Lunati. if you look at Comps stuff they have 2 oil holes that are 90˚ each direction from the vertical bar mount. Basically parallel to the oil passage. Lunati has 1 oil hole that is just under the vertical bar. So this mean the Lunati lifter MUST have the vertical bar installed facing toward the outside of the center. Not toward the center as Comps are. SO YES I F**KED UP AND PUT THEM IN BACKWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.lunatipower.com/Product.aspx?id=839&gid=214






Now I just need to figure out how to clean up this mess...

Ace

We all make mistakes every now and then. Good thing you tore into it before it ate itself up...

you said that you didnt think this was because of lack of oil,but the oil comes from that little hole in the lifter? I had some crower lifters that only had one hole ,they needed a small flat spot put on the area under the hole to get a little more oil.( .001)

steve1071 wrote:you said that you didnt think this was because of lack of oil,but the oil comes from that little hole in the lifter? I had some crower lifters that only had one hole ,they needed a small flat spot put on the area under the hole to get a little more oil.( .001)

X2.....the last set of Crower lifters I installed they [Crower] had machined a very small groove from the oil ban to the feed hole......unlike the Crowers I had to take a drimel to years ago [Doug Rahn's A460 engine].

Ace, you don't want the feed hole turned directly to the oil gallery.

I"m not so sure they are installed wrong ?

Lem Evans wrote:

steve1071 wrote:you said that you didnt think this was because of lack of oil,but the oil comes from that little hole in the lifter? I had some crower lifters that only had one hole ,they needed a small flat spot put on the area under the hole to get a little more oil.( .001)

X2.....the last set of Crower lifters I installed they [Crower] had machined a very small groove from the oil ban to the feed hole......unlike the Crowers I had to take a drimel to years ago [Doug Rahn's A460 engine].

Ace, you don't want the feed hole turned directly to the oil gallery.

Lem
When I took the motor apart I sent the lifters back to Lunati to be rebuild. They lost them. So I was given a deal to buy a new set direct from them. What a I have now is the new (MOREL) lifters which are different and have only one hole. Lunati did find the set I sent back and rebuilt them and sent back for 1/2 the cost but stated that these are the older (Lunati Built) lifters and will no longer be able to rebuild them. Any way these have a slot on them from the oil holes to the oil passage in the block M(Most likely from the builder). These were facing toward the center of the motor when we took it apart. If I could figure out how to post picture I would.

Lem I can't call you because I broke my cell phone....

Ace

I run Morel lifters with my Comp cam and have zero issues.............it aint light on spring pressure either. If the lifters dont have enough clearance in the lifter bore it can affect the oiling with those style.

if you turn that hole in the lifter out,in line with the oil port in the block,you'll have a flood of oil on top and a drop in oil psi.i've had to cut lifters to get oil on top before,some just the left bank,but it will all depend on "where" the hole in the lifter is at.my first solid roller took longer to get oil to the rockers than i liked but it did'nt chew up anything.another thing that you need to think about is any restrictor that may or may not be in the block.if it's got one and its small you may have trouble get'n it worked out.

OK I had to slot the hole to the oil band area to get oil to the top end. Man this sucks. The original lifters were like this but I didn't have them at the time of the build because Lunati miss placed them. Sure would have saved a lot of problems for me.

Now I need to Find a good converter to try for a PRO TREE DEAL...

Ace

Updates?

I'll be getting the push rod today and getting it back together tonight. I installed my spare converter from my 514 combo to see what this will do. I must say I'm a firm believer in the JOMAR filter now. I cut this thing open and seen all the trash from the push rods. During the down time I pulled the motor as well and checked on some oil leaks that were not visible with the engine diaper on. One being the one piece oil pan gasket. This oil pan is old and repaired and tweaked so I don't blame the one piece gasket. I checked the rods and mains and they look good. No trash

Like I stated I didn't slot a feed passage like the old lifters and now this will cure the problem. I've primed the motor with out the push rods and there plenty of oil now.


Ace