So I am just starting to work on my 58 Edsel and I fired it up and there is a lot of top end noise on both sides. Sounds like it has solid lifters. I am wondering what the cause of the noise could be. The car has a 361 with 54,000 miles. It has been sitting for 10 years. I changed the oil and fired it up and since then has ran for a total of 30 minutes or so. I am going to hook up a mech oil pressure gauge and see what pressure I have. Does any one have any sugestions on what I could do to quite the top end?
While I know a bit about FE Fords, I'm not positive on this Edsel. I think your 361 is an FE motor if I'm not mistaken. I do know that 58 Fords with 332 and 352 FE motors did have solid lifters. I'm thinking maybe you should take off a valve cover to see if it does have an adjustable valve train and solid lifters. The rocker arms are different as solids have to be able have adjustment. The later hydraulic lifter rocker arms on 352s did not have any adjustment capability. It would just be the cost of a valve cover gasket to know for sure...
I would suspect bent pushrods. When I got my 59 villager with the 332fe I was told by a friend that the fe engines tended to suffer from bent pushrods after sitting or over revving. Sure enough I had 4 bent...two on each side. $16 or so to replace from NAPA. My 59 had hydraulic lifters FYI..one collapsed as well. Again $4 to replace or so. Good luck!
Checked the oil pressure...45psi Popped the valve covers and found three push rods laying there free from the rockers. So I am planning on pulling the intake, taking the lifters out soaking, cleaning and then put them back in the spot they came from. What do you guys think?
I would pull the valve train first and remove the pushrods and see if they are bent. If so replace them. If they aren't and you have collapsed lifters, you can pull the lifters using a strong magnet without pulling the intake. Either way I would just replace either all the pushrods if the three are bent to be safe. At $4 each that's not bad. On mine I just replaced the four bent ones and let it go for now. I also soaked the valve trains and valve stems in marvel mystery oil to be sure it wasn't caused by a stuck valve. I also ran a tiny bit down the carb at about 3000 rpm to be sure. No problems in the 75 miles since.
I think I agree with above... pulling the intake is a real pain as if it's the original cast iron piece; it weighs nearly 100 lbs. Taking it off isn't so bad. It's putting it back on without having it leak oil is the issue as the end gaskets can be a problem. Which style valve train do you have? Hydraulic or solids? Do the pushrods have a ball on both ends or one end has a cup? The ones with the cup on one end are the adjustable valve and solid lifters. The ball end on both ends means you have hydraulic lifters. The rocker arms will tell you that as well. I don't know that you can get the cup style push rods for $4 each or not. Those are harder to find.
The motor has hydraulic lifters. I checked and the pushrods are not bent. The plan is to pull the lifters, clean them and put them back in the spot they came from. rprice76...Good idea about using the magnet. What kind of magnet did you use?
I got rebuilt short block , got new edelbrock cam + timing kit, redone heads, new lifter came with edel cam, lubricated well. Started engine, knock-knock-knock-knock- at idle?? was using 10W-30 oil. Then I put 20e-50 Gulf Zinc plus oil, noises went away ?
After sitting for 10 years running the oil pump with a drill motor for 10 minutes would be a good idea. For those that are challenged by such a task it's OK to pre lube with a pressurized vessel plumbed to the oil pressure gage port. I use a 20# refrigerant tank with a 3/4" pipe sleeve welded to the top for filling with oil, a 3/4" pipe plug drilled and tapped to 1/4 npt caps the sleeve, a 1/4"npt T for a shrader valve and a barb for the hose to plumb to the engine oil port. Any how dump a gallon of oil in the tank, cap up, connect hose to engine and hit the shrader with shop air, walaa, instant oil pressure to the sleeping engine, a little lube before the poor thing is awakened from it's long sleep. Too late for this thread but something to keep in mind for the future.
The magnet I used was a long flexible screwdriver type with a light on the end. Be sure to get a VERY strong rare earth magnet - and make sure that the rod its on is VERY stiff - that thing will stick to EVERYTHING on the way down. Also be sure to not drop the lifter into the oil galley. I don't think any damage will occur - but it will then be stuck there and rattle around and to remove you have to pull the 100+ pound intake.
So before I removed the bad lifter I noticed that 3 of the 4 rocker shafts were loose. So that is why the 3 pushrods were loose. It looks like the last pushrod came out of the cup in the lifter and snapped half of the retainer clip in the lifter whichcaused the lifter to come apart not collapse. Going to order a new lifter and I should be good to go. rprice76, where did you get your lifters from?
Ok so found out what happened. The rocker shafts have 4 bolts that fasten them to the head. 3 of the bolts are the same length and 1 of the 4 is 1/4 or so longer. It looks like someone put a few new pushrods back a few years ago and when they put the rocker shafts back on the put 2 long bolts and 2 short on the p***enger side and 4 short bolts on the driver side. The p***enger side with the extra long bolt never set the rocker shaft tight to the head which allowed the shaft to move up and down 1/8 of an inch or so which let the pushrod come up out of the lifter and back down on the clip breaking it and allowing the lifter to come apart. WE were able to pull all of the lifter pieces out...they were all next to the lifter. We put 1 new lifter in and am puting the new pshrods in this Friday. Should quiet down alot.
i bought the car from the 2nd owner. He bought let the cars sit in his garage since 1995. He put $4,000 ito rebuilding the brakes, front suspension and a bunch of other things and only put 200 miles on it. He bought the car from the original owner and theyparked the car in their garage for 10 years or so. The car only has 54,000 miles and I have all of the service records and registration. In the mid 70's it only had 49,000 miles.
does it need one of those oiling kits? I know a lot of people put them on y blocks.. don't know anything about Edsels though..
So got this repair done a week or two ago. Runs alot quieter and better on all 8 cylinders firing. Did a compression test with solid numbers. Does anybody know of any Edsel 361 upgrades that I should be doing like a "oiler kit" mentioned above?
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