Failed Rocker Arm
Have a LA 360 with EQ magnum heads on it. It's always had a little miss, which I attributed to ignition and carb issues, so I did plugs, wires, distributor and rebuilt the carb (needed a good clean anyways). The miss never really went away fully, but it wasn't horrible so I figured it was just normal for the engine.
Go back to about a month ago and I notice that there's a little blue-ish smoke coming out of one exhaust, which I know isn't normal for this engine, so I plan on taking the valve covers off to take a look and see if there's something going on.
Fast forward to last week, finally get around to having time to start some disassembly, so I took the truck out of the garage after it had been sitting for a couple weeks and drove it about 5 mins to get home. Notice a heck of a lot more blue smoke coming out of both tailpipes this time. Think 'ah crap, this isn't good'.
Take the drivers side valve cover off and find this:
Pulled the pushrod out and it's straight. It appears this failed VERY recently (aka, on the drive home), because there doesn't look to be any wear marks on any of the other components from things rubbing in bad spots. No metal shavings hanging out in the head. The retainers are still on the spring nice and tight, the bolt holding the rocker pivot is still tight.
So...my question is, what to do next?
As long as the pushrod and lifter (hydraulic flat tappet) are fine, to do an oil change, buy a new rocker arm, pivot, keeper & bolt install it and see how it goes?
To me it looks like the rocker arm just failed, but what other things could have caused this that I could be overlooking? Should I be pulling intake and heads and going over the tappet and cam?
Thanks!
Have a LA 360 with EQ magnum heads on it. It's always had a little miss, which I attributed to ignition and carb issues, so I did plugs, wires, distributor and rebuilt the carb (needed a good clean anyways). The miss never really went away fully, but it wasn't horrible so I figured it was just normal for the engine.
Go back to about a month ago and I notice that there's a little blue-ish smoke coming out of one exhaust, which I know isn't normal for this engine, so I plan on taking the valve covers off to take a look and see if there's something going on.
Fast forward to last week, finally get around to having time to start some disassembly, so I took the truck out of the garage after it had been sitting for a couple weeks and drove it about 5 mins to get home. Notice a heck of a lot more blue smoke coming out of both tailpipes this time. Think 'ah crap, this isn't good'.
Take the drivers side valve cover off and find this:
Pulled the pushrod out and it's straight. It appears this failed VERY recently (aka, on the drive home), because there doesn't look to be any wear marks on any of the other components from things rubbing in bad spots. No metal shavings hanging out in the head. The retainers are still on the spring nice and tight, the bolt holding the rocker pivot is still tight.
So...my question is, what to do next?
As long as the pushrod and lifter (hydraulic flat tappet) are fine, to do an oil change, buy a new rocker arm, pivot, keeper & bolt install it and see how it goes?
To me it looks like the rocker arm just failed, but what other things could have caused this that I could be overlooking? Should I be pulling intake and heads and going over the tappet and cam?
Thanks!