weird noise

You might want to pull the head and check your valves.

I took my 340 Cuda to a swap meet once. A guy walking out told me that there was something wrong with my heads and could hear something was wrong. I didn't hear anything wrong.

I drove the car on and off over the summer. My daily driver was down for repairs, so I had to drive this to work until I got the other one fixed. On my way home one day it started making some strange noises. Within a mile the noise gets worse, big white puff of smoke (or should I say cloud), and the engine dies and tow it home.

One of the valves lost the keepers and came apart. I had hardened seats and a valve job done not 20k miles before.


Another time after visiting my dad for a weekend, I lost 3rd gear on the transmission and had to drive home in second gear on the H-way. Then strange noises, get worse, big white cloud of smoke and dead. Floated a valve, hit the piston and sent the rod through the block. Piston demolished into many small pieces, huge chuncks missing on two sides of the block and connecting rod bent like a pretzel.

Strange noises and white smoke makes me worry. If you don't catch it in time you might end up looking at crate engines in the future.

Pull the valve covers, rocker arms, and make sure all of your valves and keepers are seated properly.