I thin I Found the Problem

[Bob Cowan]

Went for a drive in the mountains with friends yesterday. Car ran OK, but not well. By the time I got to Boulder, there was a lot of smoke out the right side pipe. I'd had some troubles with injector #3, so I swapped the plugs with 3 and 4. When I started it again, no smoke! Wierd.

As the day wore on, the smoke would come and go. sometimes a light haze, and sometimes fogging for mosquitos. If I played with the mixture, it would go away, and then come back. I just had the injectors rebuilt, I figured this might be an injector harness problem. It also sorta looked like a valve seal problem. But it was so intermittent, I wasn't convinced.

Before taking anything apart, I decided to do some testing. Before a cure can be prescribed, proper diagnosis is critical. I started with a compression check. Some of the plugs looked rich, but none of them were oil fouled. Probably not a valve seal.

On the compression check, #1 was only 85psi! Crud! That's a problem. To check the rings, I squirted 5cc of motor oil into the cylinder, then spin the engine over a few times. On second check, compression was down to 45psi. What? that doesn't make sense. But at least it's not the rings.

After I took the valve cover off, I found this:



Looking down the slot I could see the lifter was out of place. Off comes the intake manifold. Again. Not a big deal, and only takes a couple of hours to R&R. But I don't have a new gasket on hand, I have to order them.


All the parts seem to be in good condition, I don't have to replace anything. Once I get the new manifold gasket, I'll put it all back together and give it another try.

[Big-Foot]

Hi Bob,
Man you got lucky on that one!

Just curious, when you checked your pushrod length, did you use a solidified (bound up) hydraulic roller or ??

Reason why I ask is that it appears that a pushrod may have hopped off first, then it spit out the lifter. I've a good friend that has had the same problem that you are showing on 3 different occassions.

In watching the roller rocker walk across the valve stem to see the contact patch, it looks pretty good. However, that was with the hydraulic roller. Think about it. With the lifter partially collapsed, the pushrod is effectively shorter. However, once running, the lifter will pump up a little and that will change the contact patch.

Long story short, we adjusted the length of the pushrods by ordering a shorter set that matched the length it should have been with the hydraulic lifter pumped up and zero lash..

No more problem.

[akpingel]

WOW that is crazy! Im glad to hear nothing was damaged. Is that the intake or exhaust valve? Im guessing exhaust, otherwise it would have felt like a dropped cylinder?

[tjmotter]

I just posted something that may be related in the other forum. I have been hearing a loud metal on metal sound (varied from a loud "tick" to a metal slapping noise) and root caused it to a bad lifter. It was VERY loud but would only occur above 3000RPM with absolutely no noise below that. After taking each lifter apart and putting them back together it became obvious that one of the brand new Ford Racing lifters was a LOT softer than the others. It was almost as if the spring was bad but upon closer examination I found that the internal bore of the lifter was a little too large. What this meant was that the lifter appeared to work ok at low rev's because the oiling could keep up but at higher revs, it was too loose and would pump the oil out faster than it could recharge. All it would take to see the same issue as you would be to have the pushrod slip out during this process but fortunately, the guides were able to keep it in place.

You should seriously consider taking that lifter apart. Afterwards, try to re-assemble and look to see if it is stiff or soft when you try to compress it. There is an obvious difference between a good lifter and my bad lifter.

BTW, if you search on the web you will find a couple of stories where Ford Racing lifters were bad.

I replaced the lifters and my noise is gone. I also seem to be making more power. For what it is worth, I changed the lifters to a new set of Trick Flow simply because they can be purchased 1 at a time (Ford only sells in sets of 16) so if this happens again, I can spend $7.50 instead of $120.

HTH

Todd

[Bob Cowan]

Originally Posted by Big-Foot

Hi Bob,
Man you got lucky on that one!

Just curious, when you checked your pushrod length, did you use a solidified (bound up) hydraulic roller or ??

I use light weight checking springs for that job. I had the heads off a few weeks ago. I suspect I didn't adjust the valves correctly, and didn't tighten down the lock nut. It was not tight when I took it off.

Originally Posted by akpingel

WOW that is crazy! Im glad to hear nothing was damaged. Is that the intake or exhaust valve? Im guessing exhaust, otherwise it would have felt like a dropped cylinder?

Intake valve. That's why the cylinder pressure was so low.

Originally Posted by tjmotter

I just posted something that may be related in the other forum. I have been hearing a loud metal on metal sound (varied from a loud "tick" to a metal slapping noise) and root caused it to a bad lifter.

I already took the lifter apart, and then put it back together. All looks well. These lifters were modified by Keith Craft, with better guts for more rpm's.

[Dan Babb]

Are you able to figure out why that happened?

Anytime there's a failure, I like to try to figure out what could have caused it. Otherwise, you could be putting the parts back together and it might happen again.


Nevermind...you just posted. Sounds like the lock-nut is the likely culprit.

[Don Payne]

Wow, I never would have guessed that given your intro. I see linked bar lifters in your future.

[cobradawg]

I have the Ford motorsport hyd. lifters and have one that clicks just slightly above 1800rpm or so, can't hear it at high rpm due to engine noise. I reset the lash but it still does it. Think I may have a weak lifter?? 3500mi. on the engine.

[Bob Taylor]

I theen you're right ! Last time i had that problem I missed a shift flat out and banged the limiter. I chalked it up to "I cant drive at the track" . I put it back together with some new parts , then learned how not to miss shifts and it never happened again , or I forgot to tighten the locknut enough. Bob

[CraigS]

I know your first pic is from an angle that isn't real good for what I am noticing but....it looks to me like the adjuster nut is in the same position on all the studs we can see. So why did this one come apart and the others are OK? Seems that if the adjustment was off enough to cause a problem there should have been some pretty obvious noise that you would have heard when you were swapping plugs.

[Thumper135]

Lucky, sort of…. I had one like this some time ago on a 460, but it wiped out about everything. We never did figure out just what the cause was. I’m glad this is all the worse it was for you. I hope you can find the route cause and it doesn’t happen again. I’m just wondering why all the rocker adjusters look the same as CraigS pointed out and this one jumped the road as it were. Are the lifters hydraulic, and could that one have gone flat for some reason allowing the pushrod to step up on the shoulder and work the rocker off?
Let us know what you find as a possible cause here for a referance.
Good luck with everything going back together.

[Tennessee Tim]

I had a similar problem. I heard some ovbious ticking noise after first start, and figured that I had not correctly preloaded one of the lifters. Here's what I found on the intake side of #5:



The polylock was loose, and the clip at the cup end of the lifter had come off and was in the valley. I'm not really sure what happened. I suppose it is possible that I didn't tighten the polylock correctly, though I had a checklist during assembly and was very retentive about double-checking everything. I have a suspicion that the lifter failed to pump up. That would cause all manner of mayhem with the lifter banging against the pushrod, bending the pushrod and possibly loosening the polylock. It is designed to stay under at least some tension. I replaced all of the pushrods, all of the lifters and one rocker. So far, so good.

Tim