Technical Buick nailhead 322 -55 rockerarm lubrication

I got myself a buick -55 with a 322 nailhead, a bit noise from the lifters when i start it up, and bleeding motor oil everywhere so i took off the valve covers, intake and lifter gallery cover. The engine is filled with old dried motoroil, removed the rockerarms and gave them a good clean, the holes in the rockerarms are twice as big now , I put a airgun in the hole closest to the fan that feeds the rocker arm ***embly, so i guess the hole closest to the firewall is where the return oil goes? If i block that hole wouldnt the rockerarms get better lubrication? The leftover oil runs down the holes for the pushrods anyway.
Seems like a good idea atm, but i might be wrong? Or is the rear hole also feeding the rockerarms with oil?

 

Russ Martin and his son Matt have always been helpful with my Buick questions in the past, a good place to visit online: http://nailheadbuick.com/

 

Here is a good article on Nailheads by Russ Martin
http://www.underhoodservice.com/tech-spec-nailing-down-the-misunderstood-buick-nailhead/

 

I hope you know what you are doing. I did a similar clean up when I was young and stupid, the loose dirt and sludge got into the oil pan and plugged the oil pickup screen, the engine blew within 10 miles. Suggest you run some kind of engine flush or remove the oil pan and clean it out.

Don't go blocking anything. The engineers who designed your motor knew what they were doing.

 

Yeah, if the engine has that much sludge in it, it's probably a good idea to remove the pan and clean it out as much as you can. You'll have to refresh my memory on Nailheads, but what about the lifter valley? Do you just pull the intake manifold, or there's a cover underneath isn't there? In any case, I'd open that up too and clean that as much as you can while the pan is off.

As far as motor flush goes, I'm not a fan, I'd just change the oil very frequent for a few changes. Modern engine oils have good detergency, they can clean up a dirty engine pretty good.

 

Valley has a separate pan.

 

Im going to drop the pan after im done cleaning and clean the oilpickup too, got rid of most dried up oil now, going to flush everything with diesel so i dont have any gunk stuck at the cam. Going to cut up the vent cover plate to clean the breether aswell.

 

if you take the rockers off the shaft, make sure you put the holes in the shaft down.

 

Dis***embled the rockerarms and the shaft was a bit worn so i ordern two new ones, removed the oilpanand cleaned out the pan, took the oilpump apart and cleaned the pickup, just waiting for gaskets then im ready to put some oil in it and run the oilpump through the distributor hole to see hows the oil is flowing [emoji4]

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The center pan cut open an rewelded, tons of gunk in there, so hopefully shes going to breathe better now [emoji108]


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Cittra, by any chance was the oil pump loose ? I've seen several early Buick V8 engine failures (in virgin cars) because the pump came loose.
Is the spring still good in the pump relief valve ? They break & the two halves wind themselves together.

 

Everything was fine, but someone took the oilpump apart like 40 years ago (or so, there was one inch of gunk in the pan), the screws that hold the lid was a bit damaged.

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