My 422 smallblock build
Wellllllllll, took another step backwards today. Fired up the car after work today noticed that the rocker noise on the driver side seemed a little louder than normal. Thinking that it was probably just the valve lash being a touch loose, I let it warm up on high idle.
When the noise didn’t change with some heat in the motor I shut it down and decided to pull the valve cover and check the lash. Well, it was loose alright. Somehow the pushrod had come unseated from the rocker adjuster and the top of the pushrod commenced to beating the adjuster to death.
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Upon further investigation, I noticed that a few of the pushrods are getting discolored on the rocker end due to getting really overheated. That tells me we have an oiling issue at the rockers. The gauge reads 75psi cold, 60psi at cruise, and 40psi hot idle. So she’s making good pressure and it is a HV pump. Must be a restriction somewhere in the rocker shaft assembly.
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The plan is to remove the oil pump drive and install my priming tool and spin the pump to see what’s going on with the oil at the rockers.
No offense but your pushrods are way too short. The Chrysler recommendation is the adjuster (at lash) should be out 9/32 (about .281 thou) and I think plus .050 minus .000.
That said, there is more bad news. At some point no matter what you do you will smoke adjusters. And AFAIK there are two and only two fixes.
IMO if you have the money now is the time to step up to T&D or Jesel rockers and be done.
If that’s not doable then the fix is simple to do (relatively) but it’s a beeotch to explain.
The problem is, and Chrysler has been lying about it since I figured it out in about 1994ish.
I sent them about 10 pages of documentation with detailed pictures and explanations. They said I was wrong and I told them they were stupid or liars. Or both.
The upshot is (and I’m 99.999% sure it was never fixed because I have brand new, never used W2 shafts from about 2005 and they are wrong. So the fix is the responsibility of the end user.
Anyway the upshot is Chrysler, to the very best of my knowledge that Chrysler NEVER changed the oil hole location in the shafts to match the W2 offset.
Again, to the very best of my knowledge every W2 ever produced for Chrysler has the oil holes clocked for the TA offset.
What that means is the oil hole in the shaft NEVER lines up with the hole in the rocker. At that point you are oiling the adjusters off the oil mist in the valve covers because you ain’t getting any oil out of the holes for the adjusters.
You can get by quite a bit with the oil mist in the valve covers but eventually it will bite you in the ***. HARD. That’s appears to be where you are now.
The fix is to mock up the shafts and rockers as they are exactly on the engine. You need to apply machinists bluing on the shafts. And leave the adjusters out.
Once it’s all mocked up, you take a small scribe and go through the oil hole in the rocker and mark the shaft.
Then you have to disassemble everything. Then I mount the shaft in a mill and using carbide tooling I drill the holes in the shaft where Chrysler SHOULD have put them.
At that point, you can run at least 360 months seat and 900 plus over the nose and spin it up to 8500 on a regular basis.
I know that because I have done it.
It’s a big **** sandwich. I’ll eat it again when I do the W2 engine. Unless I can sell the valve gear I have and buy T&D.