Technical Y-block Ford rocker oiling,,How I fix it !

Y-block Ford V8's, 1954 to 1965,have had,like most older engines,some sloopy owners causing dirty oil that gums up the engine !!
This often makes a blockage in oil feed to rocker arms.
Ford Y,feeds the rocker up through the block,but at the top of block; That feed makes a 90* turn for about 1 in. along the head gastket an small cannel,before then going up through head,too feed the rocker shaft assm. !
That dog lag at the head gasket on each side,is were a drit/sludge build up stops n blocks off oil flow!

Too fix a blocked,feed to rockers,with out removing heads.;
Remove rocker arm shafts,so you can get to the oil hole coming up through the head. Put rockershafts in a cleaning tank n let sit. Then get a small drill bit an twist in your fingers down the hole as far as you can go/should pull up some of the sludge ,keep doing that an blast cleaner down hole between each try.
When it seems your not getting much out. Add some PB Blaster or Carb cleaner or WD40 ect. what ever,and blast down the oil hole.
Now you can test to see if oil can come up out of head,there's two ways; Pull all the sparkplugs out an spin engine enough to make oil PSI for a short time>looking to see some flow out of hole/if there is/your done and now have rocker oiling !!
But if nothing is coming out yet,next step is,blast more clearner down head oil feed,let set for a
time,repete. Then remove oil psi gage from side of block,an hook up your airhose nozzle
to your air compressor,at around 100+ psi, But before sticking the tip into oil; gage hole,be sure your not lined up in any way with oil feed coming out of head !!
Then give it a blast of 100+ psi air= should now of cleared out the feed.
Or keep that up tell it dose ! I've done about a doz. Y's this way,an all have come clean with out removing the heads.
After getting oil flow again too rockers,clean an blow out the rocker shafts too. These may need some new parts if they been run a long time with out oil feed to them !
Before putting the sparkplugs back in,spin engine tell you see oil came up through head by engines oil pump+ so you now know oil,is back in place> that you blow out clearing rocker feed.
Not fullproof an sometimes,we do need to pull the heads or more. The few times,I had too,it turned out I found things so bad,I was happy I had to go more !!!!
Hope that save some one some extra work,if they didn't want to pull heads or do a full rebuild.

 

Should have been a plumber.

 

Great post Dana ,makes sense to me !
There’s nothing wrong with doing things the easy way .
No reason to pull head’s unless it’s really necessary,,,,, save a lot of work .

Tommy

 

Years ago I remember reading an article about pulling the rocker shafts and tapping the oil feed hole for a grease zerk. Then use a grease gun to clear the hole.

My Y block was pretty clean inside and was oiling the rockers. However, it was slap wore out, even though it ran good. I replaced almost everything when I rebuilt it.

 

My father was big on putting a quart of ATF in the crankcase about a day or so before an oil change. This was in our 54 Ford Customline .....239 Y block. This was our main family car...........I ended up driving it to high school
I remember seeing this engiine get rebuilt several times. It was always very clean inside when it got tore down,

Great Tech Post Dana !!!!!!

 

Very useful information. Thank you.

 

Excellent information, I would only add, keep a GOOD oil filter and GOOD oil in the engine and you should have no more trouble. For an engine like this with solid lifters a fine bypass filter is better than the coarser full flow filter.

 

That was a common problem with Y-blocks. The oil of yore was not always very good and lack of oil changes and stop and go city driving didn't help, either. There was a kit sold at a lot of parts places that you could put on the thing to get oil up there. It consisted of a hollow bolt and some fittings and copper tube. You could tap into the pressure gauge hole and feed the rockers. Worked pretty good. Then, because of the same causes the drain back holes would plug up and fill the valve covers with oil. What fun!

 

My dad used kerosene. 54 Mainline

 

Also people back then like to remove the thermostat so the cars ran real cool and caused sludge to form. The problem was people and their habits, not the Y-block engine it self. Folks will say that other engines didn’t do it and they are correct, but if proper ,or even close to proper, maintenance was used no problem would occur in the Y-block. At one time we had five of them operating on the ranch and never had that problem with any of them!






Bones

 

The oil to the rockers in a Y block comes from a hole in the rear cam bearing. If that bearing spins or is not aligned correctly the rockers will not get oil, or get reduced oil flow.

 

I would agree the design of the oil feed gallery isn't the best, but the problem was exposed or made worse by the motor oils of the day and generally poor maintenance practices. That is a neat trick with the shop air into the oil sender port. I'm just mad I hadn't thought of it. But what about engines that are rebuilt, or good runners that are maybe still "Clean for Gene"?

Excessive sludge formation can be minimized by avoiding frequent short trips. Years ago I read a book by an SAE guy, Bob Sikorsky, called "Drive It Forever", and he hammered on frequent short trips as a cause of internal engine damage and wear, etched bearings etc.

Basically, the condensation and unburned fuel buildup in the crankcase eventually turns to a low level acidic sludge and gum varnish. Motor oil itself doesn't really wear out, but eventually becomes loaded up, and the additives depleted.

I try to make it a general practice that if an engine gets started up for whatever reason, it also gets driven long enough while under load to achieve and hold normal thermostat opening temperature of 190°+ F., before it gets shut down and put away. This is a good excuse for at least a short "road trip", too.

No load idle won't get the oil temperature up, no matter what the coolant temp says. This is why I was generally never a fan of this "start the engine every 2 weeks in the winter and let idle for a half hour" business.

I think a lot of folks have really slipped over the line into silliness about motor oil and oil change frequency, but I do believe it's important to get them up to normal op temperature to "burn off" the crankcase condensation. Short trips also seems to be pretty hard on exhaust system & mufflers.

 

Center cam bearing.
But another problem is the cam bearing, the cam has a grove around the journal that the oil flows around on it's way to the holes that lead to each bank. What happens is that as the bearing wears, the cam rides lower in this bearing and this makes the area effectively more shallow restricting flow. This has been made worse by some replacement cams have been made with a very shallow grove. I have a 292 on the stand that got a new cam and I cut the grove a little deeper, also there are harder bearings that can be bought that helps also.

I guess the early motors without a PCV system did not help the problem with dirty oil either.

 

Thanks for the correction, old memories are sometimes off a little bit.

 

I have done about the same thing but taped the feeder hole in the head to 1/8 pipe screwed a zerk and filled a grease gun with 90w. Pulled the push rods and let the engine run on the other bank until oil showed up.

 

the weirdest thing about my y block is that it didnt have any sludge in the feeds, just in the returns.

 

In the 1959 Ford pickup we bought new on the ranch we put a direct reading oil pressure gauge. I can remember seeing that truck show up to 80 psi oil pressure, cold. Around 50 or 60 psi running. That much oil pressure should keep that groove clean, with any kind of normal oil change frequency. Not sure what the other Y-blocks ran on oil pressure, but I remember that 292! I though it was the toughest truck in the world as a kid! I still have that truck.







Bones







Bones

 

Does the Lincoln Y blocks have the oil feed around and through the head gaskets like the Ford Y's?

 

They made a "Top Oiler" kit for Y blocks because they didn't oil from the factory setup.. Add a Top Oiler Kit.

 

^^^^^

 

The only one I've done recently had about 60k miles, the rockers were starting to wear. the oil passages were NOT plugged.

That center cam bearing was the culprit. It's very narrow, and has a groove all the way around it, so the actual bearing surface on each side of the groove is very narrow...so it wears out quickly...and then all the pressure leaks away above the cam.

I'm impressed that a lot of them get oil flow by simply cleaning the passages. I wasn't so lucky.

 

About that top oil kit: Many Y-blocks were ruined by improper use of that kit. The good kits came with a little valve to adjust the flow. By the time most were installed, the rockers and arms were worn. As a result of the wear, lack of such a valve, or if it was set too far open, oil pressure got robbed from the crank bearings and bad things happened.

I still don't know why the cam bearing passage didn't provide enough restriction to prevent that, but it didn't.

 

Great solution Dana, and also the part about cleaning the rocker shafts. There’s a lot of room for gunk in them.

Here’s Ted Eaton’s article on the subject if you’re in the process of a rebuild. It addresses many of the issues mentioned above.

https://www.eatonbalancing.com/2021/12/31/y-block-top-end-oiling-woes/

 

Seems like we 'jobed' a straightened out coat hanger down the drain hole and that always opened it up ....for a while!
6sally6

 

Perhaps @mctim64 will chime in ...

 

Dana has a very good explanation on how to unclog the oil passages to the heads, the only thing I can add is that it won't always be that easy. Jim Forbes has a good point about the cam wearing into the bearing, worse yet I've seen bearings installed incorrectly so as to only have one hole lined up and feed only one side or the other. The only advice I can offer would help at the time of rebuild. That is to, at the very least, make the groove in the center cam journal a bit deeper than from the factory. (at least 1/16") Better yet groove the block behind the cam bearing, that is what Ford did when the FE came out. The FE is considered the "second generation Y-Block" so it had some improvements over the original. Along with the groove behind the cam bearing they also put a groove across the oil hole that feeds each rocker on the under side of the rocker shaft. I do this on every set of Y rocker assemblies I rebuild. It cuts down on wear and galling.

 

Remember Jim's Edsel thread? He went thru it's Y Block and detailed it very clearly.

 

^^^^^^^ My apologies to @Glenn Thoreson. I did something wrong trying to quote his post and seem to have deleted his original. I meant to reply to his comment about " The oil of yore ". When the Y-blocks were new, a lot of folks preferred using non-detergent oil, Quaker State 30w comes to mind, and it would just cake the interior of the block with baked on black sludge.

When I was racing, one of the things I did to get better oil flow through the block was to chamfer a pretty good radius into the oil hole in the deck of the block and another into the passage going into the head. You could grind the passage out a little for increased flow. I would add shims to the spring in the oil pump which was real easy since it was outside the engine. Only time I had a problem with oil pressure was when Valvoline came out with 10w40. I tried that once. After the temp came up, the pressure dropped to less than five pounds. Drained it out right there at the track and went back to straight 40w. No more problems.

 

Like I mentioned earlier, the main trouble with a factory Y-block was the oil used and the maintenance or lack of maintenance, was the problem. After some Jake leg worked on it , no telling what would happen. In the hay day of the Y-block multi viscosity oil became known to us. Not sure when it actually became available! My Dad used Phillips 66 10w40 in almost everything on the ranch , in the sixties. Most folks around us stayed with straight weight oil , some non detergent! We changed oil, probably not perfect, but it did get changed! We never had any problems with the Y-block engine. At one time we had five running on the ranch!


Plus , my Dad ran a 195 degree thermostat in them , also!



Bones