Help! 360 with 302 heads no compression

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Garys72Duster said:
With the looks of that motor, you have more issues than bad heads. All rusty, bent push rods, valves all stuck in the heads, What do you suppose the rings look like? They are probably all stuck to the piston. Some may even be broken. Pull out a piston, and take a picture of It. Would like to see what that looks like.
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The rust mainly appears to be outside the engine, above the intake manifold, as far as I can tell in the pictures. Some fell in when he removed the intake, but it does not look too bad.
Without knowing more details, like it sat for ten years and now wouldn't start or it has been a good running truck and engine quite and now we found all the bent pushrods, my guess by the photo and brief details is that it was running, quit running when the timing chain jumped and bent valves and pushrods, and now with fresh heads and hopefully correct length pushrods, it still gas a jumped timing chain like JunkyJimmy said. Hopefully the fresh heads are not getting damaged.
 
OP posted while I was typing.
Was the timing chain just put on or was it done at same time heads were replaced?
 
Yeah i hope not. I pulled the oil pan and looked in side. Pulled off each main cap to look at the bearings. There were no scratches or wear marks on the cylinder walls. The pistons had slight valve marks when the valves hit from the 360 heads that were on it. I didnt reuse anything off those heads. But im going to take the pushrods out today and get them checked with roller ones to see what i have
 
The guy had it running the day i picked it up. But it ran bad. There was no knocking or smoke. But you can tell it idled bad. The injectors were dumping fuel into the intake. I paid 300 for the truck
 
Man i just went through some similar BS with a 170 /6. One thing after another. Had lots of help from these forums though, but eventually had to accept that my motor was junk as it was and scrapped it. Hope you have better luck.
 
Good info for someone to know.
Thanks, good luck.
victa15 said:
The guy had it running the day i picked it up. But it ran bad. There was no knocking or smoke. But you can tell it idled bad. The injectors were dumping fuel into the intake. I paid 300 for the truck
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victa15 said:
This is what it looked like when I first took it apart. It had 4 bent pushrods.
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In the pix, I see 6 of 7 visible pushrods are bent, not just 4. Hope you are replacing them all. (Probably so, if NO cylinder shows compression...)

Timing chain dots and crank key angle all look right.
 
victa15 said:
The guy had it running the day i picked it up. But it ran bad. There was no knocking or smoke. But you can tell it idled bad. The injectors were dumping fuel into the intake. I paid 300 for the truck
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This is a TBI (throttle body injection) engine. You can SEE fuel being injected at idle. I would not judge the problem based on that.
 
I've never seen one of those timing chain tensioners except on an OHC 4 cyl motor. Shouldn't be required on a V 8. How are the cam bearings? I think you need to disassemble and inspect the engine. There is a problem somewhere causing it to not seal up. May want to run compressed air into the spark plug hole, with that cyl on TDC firing , that will tell you where the leak is. Good luck!
 
+1 vote for a pressure test. Shove some air in and listen for the hiss. That will tell you if its valves, guides, rings, crack etc.
 
67Dart273 said:
This is a TBI (throttle body injection) engine. You can SEE fuel being injected at idle. I would not judge the problem based on that.
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Yeah. Thats why i took the motor out and tore it down. The cam has no play and seemed fine.
 
Garys72Duster said:
I've never seen one of those timing chain tensioners except on an OHC 4 cyl motor. Shouldn't be required on a V 8. How are the cam bearings? I think you need to disassemble and inspect the engine. There is a problem somewhere causing it to not seal up. May want to run compressed air into the spark plug hole, with that cyl on TDC firing , that will tell you where the leak is. Good luck!
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Ive never seen one before now. I talked to a bunch of guys here and its for the 3.7 v6. Fits on the la motors. I tried 6 different timing chains and they all had a lot of slop. The tensioner fixed it
 
BTW, I looked up the 360 pushrods for 1992 and:
  • RockAuto lists TWO different pushrod lengths for 1992..... 6.900" and 6.74/6.75" long.
  • The '93 360/5.9 only lists the longer pushrods.
  • The '91 360/5.9 only lists the shorter pushrods.
  • So this could be a '92 before the transition to the longer pushrods (Magnum) and requires the shorter ones. Since you have the older valvetrain, then that makes sense.
victa15 said:
Ive never seen one before now. I talked to a bunch of guys here and its for the 3.7 v6. Fits on the la motors. I tried 6 different timing chains and they all had a lot of slop. The tensioner fixed it
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Were they all the same chain brand/model?

The tensioner in the case appears to be taking up an unusual amount of slack, based on the curvature of the chain and the fact that the cam sprocket dot is a bit CCW from perfectly aligned. We don't know the engine history to know whether or not it has been line bored, or how worn the cam bearings are. That is not nearly the best tensioner I have seen, and they have shown some problems, but it seems justified here.

I don't think there is much doubt anymore that the wrong pushrods have been used; no compression on any cylinder indicates a broad problem like that, not a problem that you would typically chase with pressure in the cylinders.
 
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Best thing would be to measure an original pushrod from the engine and compare it to the ones you bought.
 
nm9stheham said:
BTW, I looked up the 360 pushrods for 1992 and:
  • RockAuto lists TWO different pushrod lengths for 1992..... 6.900" and 6.74/6/75" long.

  • The '93 360/5.9 only lists the longer pushrods.
  • The '91 360/5.9 only lists the shorter pushrods.
  • So this could be a '92 before the transition to the longer pushrods (Magnum) and requires the shorter ones. Since you have the older valvetrain, then that makes sense.
Were they all the same chain brand/model?

The tensioner in the case appears to be taking up an unusual amount of slack, based on the curvature of the chain and the fact that the cam sprocket dot is a bit CCW from perfectly aligned. We don't know the engine history to know whether or not it has been line bored, or how worn the cam bearings are. That is not nearly the best tensioner I have seen, and they have shown some problems, but it seems justified here.

I don't think there is much doubt anymore that the wrong pushrods have been used; no compression on any cylinder indicates a broad problem like that, not a problem that you would typically chase with pressure in the cylinders.
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Thanks for the information. Its hard to find engine parts cause of the year. For example the distributor cap is the clip style. But at autozone they only sell it for the bolt on style for the year.
 
victa15 said:
Ive never seen one before now. I talked to a bunch of guys here and its for the 3.7 v6. Fits on the la motors. I tried 6 different timing chains and they all had a lot of slop. The tensioner fixed it
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I would check that. I bet the THREE POINT NINE v6 is the tensioner you want. it is a pushrod engine based on a 'sawed off' 5.2/5.9. The 3.7 is a whole different animal, similar to the 4.7, and overhead cam
 
^^Those TBI roller blocks oil through the block/ heads, same as non roller A^^
 
AJ/FormS said:
Those are LA heads on the original engine right? How are the arms oiled?
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67Dart273 said:
^^Those TBI roller blocks oil through the block/ heads, same as non roller A^^
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Dang, never thought down that road.....but if this is a pre-Magnum 360, then I would think they would do as you say, and oil through the block. OP, any pix of the top of the block with the heads off?
 
AJ/FormS said:
Don't forget to pull the pin out!
Those are LA heads on the original engine right? How are the arms oiled?
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Hahaha. I did lol. But took the push rods out and saw they are bigger then the old ones

20190305_165503.jpg
 
victa15 said:
But took the push rods out and saw they are bigger then the old ones
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And from that pix, they are about 'half a ball' different in length, which is what the listed variation is in the early vs. late ones for '92: 0.15-0.16" difference.
 
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