Technical He's got some SBC woes

the lightweights aren't used because they are tougher than the stock ones, they are used because the stock heavy ones can 'float" at high rpm and the pump intermittently will stop pumping. I know, I know HAMBers typically don't care about this kinda stuff, but you may want to consider what happens as you get close to the end of the backstraight and the engine has gone lean because the fuel pump has cut out when you went WOT coming out of the second turn...Suddenly, the long term wear characteristics of the fuel pump pushrod may take a backseat....
and if that's a coating, it still aint gonna make much difference, when oil that's been in an engine for a few hundred miles comes out thin and black, it can either be fuel contamination, which you presumably would have smelt, or the oil has broken down due to really high oil temps. Either way, you are in deep shit. 2nd is far worse than the first.

 

I like that you were honest with the guy, and I thank you for posting what you found. From my POV, you can only hope he chooses a crate motor, because now that you've touched it, you own it if it goes back together.
I think the cam/lifters were destroyed with all the cranking and it not running upon first attempts at startup. That still doesnt answer the oiling problem. I'd keep digging, just for my own curiosity.
I've ran the lightweight fuel pump pushrod in a dirt track motor, it was recommended to me because it had a bronze end, and was riding on a steel roller cam.
Smokey Yunick didnt think much of the roller-tipped stamped rockers, that was good enough for me.
Good Luck!

 

The 4607 bronze tip fuel pump pushrod is for a steel cam. In this engine we had a 4607 and a cast cam.

Manufacturer Part Number:
4607

Manufacturer:
Competition Cams

Description:
Fuel Pump Pushrods; Light Weight Tubing; w/Bronze Tip For Steel Cams;


The 4616 is a steel tip light weight push rod for use with cast cam.

 

Niiiiiice...

 

[QUOTEt...I wont say who came out with that junk in the first place, a lot of guys on here like "Walmart" cams...[/QUOTE]
Sorry to hijack, waited till things were quiet. I'm guessing your talking about Comp Cams. I picked up a motor on the cheap that was machined etc. but never put together and it has the stamped rockers with a flat tappet #284 cam. The motor is pretty impressive for what it cost me. Should I be worried about the rollers coming apart? I am a little heavy on the foot. Never had any experience with them before.

 

So now there's a 375 HP 355 ci from blueprint headed in. Prolly see it noonish Monday.

 

Strobe light testing of roller tips at RPM reveal that the rollers do not really roll across the valve stem tip. There just is not enough time for the roller to oscillate in one direction - stop - then oscillate in the opposite direction.

 

they are good stuff , have recommended several to people I know , only one failure , and it was credit card racer induced ( no brains or knowledge just access to lots of credit ) , put nitrous on it and it was a HU piston motor shattered 2 pistons , so not Blueprints fault . the idiots tried to blame it on BP and me . they made fools of themselves ..

 

It is good that you are not having to build an Engine for him using any of the left overs from that Meltdown.
I hope he can enjoy the new one and have some fun with it.

 

That should serve him well, certainly better than that abortion he had!

 

Sounds like the perfect storm. Mismatched parts. No cam break in procedure.
I'm guessing piss poor assembly tactics to go along with the above.
Years ago a guy brought me a 355 SBC from a local rebuilder engine exchange.
Short block in a bag. I put it on the stand, rolled it over with my breaker bar and noticed it had a tight spot where it felt like it was dragging through about 180 ° of the rotation. I disassembled the motor and found a piece of broken crank grinding stone wedged in one of the oil galleys dragging on a bearing. That pretty much told me not all engine assemblers run a bore brush through their fresh ground cranks before assembly.

 

Sorry to hijack, waited till things were quiet. I'm guessing your talking about Comp Cams. I picked up a motor on the cheap that was machined etc. but never put together and it has the stamped rockers with a flat tappet #284 cam. The motor is pretty impressive for what it cost me. Should I be worried about the rollers coming apart? I am a little heavy on the foot. Never had any experience with them before.[/QUOTE]
as long as the spring pressures are low, they will be fine.

 

Let me guess, you are going to take the old POS motor in trade for your labor to swap the motors out, just so you can finish tearing it down and report to all of us what was REALLY wrong from the beginning.

 

I do not feel bad now that my 235 I rebuilt only lasted about 10,000 miles before the rod bearings took a dump,alot better then 500 miles and would be sick to have a motor only run that long.

 

Not unless I can have it for dinner. Lol.

My Best free guesses.

The cam shows wear, the lifter bottoms do too. One can only guess here but endless cranking from one guy with no fire, then #2 guy does get it to start & #3 guy tunes it to run right. So which guy did a cam break in? Which one of them put light weight valve springs in to do it right? Don't know, at this point nobody ever will or can get an answer to if it was ever done or not.

I can't really see the rear cam bearing, but there's a typhoon of oil coming thru the lifter galley. The lifter clearance seems sloppy to my calibrated fingers. The lifters show some odd wear marks from the bore, So I think it was loosing some oil there around the lifters, I'd say that is problem 1.

Next is the rocker geometry and the hole in the rocker lining up with the push rod hole. Id say this is problem 2. Running the pump with the drill, There is what seems to be more than adequate flow thru the lifters to the pishbut the pressure seems down (aka problem 1) and then mix in problem 2 and the result is no oil up top.

Some place along the way a incorrect fuel pump pushrod got ate up in there too.

 

Funny thing about engines.
I've seem them built on dirt floors and run forever. Seen them built in million dollar clean rooms and blow up on the test stand.

In grade school I rebuilt a Suzuki 70 trail hopper. It had a cir-clip stuck between the piston and cylinder. It ran great for about 1 month and the engine locked up. It sat in the corner for 20 years, got moved and sat, moved and sat some more. I finally tore it open and a damn cir-clip stuck in there again. Then I got a flash back from grade school, that day in the garage when I could only find 3 cir clips. 1 that was stuck, and 2 in the kit. Now I still had 3, 1 that was stuck and 2 in the piston.

 

It's been said that it is sometimes better to be lucky than good.

 

And that is why they have to give a warranty on things, anything mechanical can and will break at some point in time and you can never be 100% certain when or which one will break and which one will hold up. With proper procedures you can improve your odds and that is what we all try to do.

 

Vicky, you've helped us out here in SBC Land, I read...and have stretched a pump spring or two back in the '60's, it was recommended by some magazine builder. Wasn't M/T, maybe Grumpy.

 

Yep !

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The second law also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative.'

Ok so what's entropy ? A gradual decline to disorder.

Mechanical things are new and without wear only until the first motion. Mechanical things are built for the sole purpose to move and gradually decline until broken or wore out to a point where they are no longer useful.

 

The more I think about it my 235 has been making noises since I started driving the truck 15 years ago but always thought it was valvetrain noise since it was just a rattle so the build was not any better then that motor but was very lucky I was able to squeeze almost 10,000 miles out of it. I knew I had more serious problems when thicker oil cured the rattle for a short time.

 

You might be spot on for an ICE w/an oil lube system! However explain please how botany (plants) and even children (eventually) decrease entropy, or 'go negative' into an increasing order direction (-s) when they mature...(err, maybe exc. in HAMB member cases!)

 

as long as the spring pressures are low, they will be fine.[/QUOTE]
I had to leave as I was typing this, I have a guy from NY here buying some bikes today, and had to go help him load, so I got interrupted while typing this. I was going to say "as long as the spring pressures are low, they will be fine. I would only use them in an application where I would also be comfortable using stock rockers."

 

^Thanks, I should be OK.