another one broke.. 410 stroker

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Dakota_Don

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well first my old combo (brake in only) the heads leaked water into a cyl and it HYD locked. so i sent the 360(.030 over) xe274h cam, 770 carb ext.. out to get stroked (410) same cam lifters, intake and carb, during brake in it seemed to run ok, but had a rough idle.. so the weather was cold and i let it sit. Today i thought id lookinto it and pulled off a valve cover and found 3 broken adj alu rockers. Now i know there must be alu shavings in the oil Grrrrrrrrr, I know some of you have had simular problems. did you change main and rods? or run it?

i am soooooooo stressed out i been trying to get this truck going since 2003, I am broke.. i dunno what to do other then scrap the whole thing and give up..

this is the second engine that didnt get out of the garage
here are a couple of pics..

first one is a broken adjuster i have 3 that are broken..

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adjuster1.JPG
 
what would you do?

flush the engine with oil?

or pull it out and do it again?
 
im not an enginebuilder but i would pull it out clean it out real good and make sure nothing more got hurt buy the shavings and reasemble with new rockers on just for peace of mind, is there any chans the rockers got hurt by lack of clearance somewhere?
 
I would drain the oil into a nice clean pan or lay a metal screen accross your pan as you drain it. Take a look and see if you actually see any metal in the screen/pan.
Then I would remove both rocker shafts and teh distributor and distributor/oil pump drive gear.
Put the plug back in the pan and pour a quart of Marvel Mystery oil in the crankcase and use a primer shaft in a drill motor to pump the Marvel through the engine. Do it for a minute or so.
Then drain the Marvel out and see if there is any metal coming out now.
If you still have metal, you need to pull the engine and do a real good cleaning and check all the bearings.
If it was coming out clean, put the drain plug back in and pour a quart or two of motor oil in and turn the pump again for a minute. Now drain it through a clean screen one more time and take a look. If it's clean you should be ok.


Back to the rockers.
What kind are they?
What method did you use to adjust them?
What method did you use to check for proper push rod length?
If the lifters were not pumped up when you adjusted them, the oil pressure will pump them up when you start the engine and bang valves. If this is what happened, you also have bent valves. When you removed the rocker shafts, this would have been fairly obvious because the broken rockers valves would not close all the way.
I have not seen anyone running ebay roller rockers with success. If those have the little needle bearings inside the shaft hole, they are junk. Sorry to tell you that, but it's true. You would be much better off finding a used set of 273 rocker arms or Crane # 69771-16. The Gold Race Rollers are great but cost around $400 nowadays. They are actually a bargain compared to some of the other brands.

Another thought on why they are breaking, have you checked for spring bind and/or contact with the valve seal?
 
i guess im pulling the engine.. the engine was all assembled at a shop, how they were adjusted i do not know..I will pull it and take it back to them..


but i know there are alu shaving in the oil.. i can see it in my oil

the rockers were used from the old engine..
 
what I think happened is this, the adjuster stud broke just under the locking nut, then it fell inside the head, the the push rod backed the adjuster stud out untill the pushrod hit and rubbed the metal out of the rocker.

I do have 273 adjustable rockers..so they will go back on, and the push rods will get rechecks as well as coil bind.
 
Don, I replied on the moparts thread... If I had to guess, I'd say it was assembly/setup error. What shop did this? A performance shop?
 
yes it was a performance (mopar shop)

i dunno if i want them to fix it or go somewhere else, hopefully its not expensive..


the shop wanted to button the whole thing up. guess who is getting a call tomorrow .. i just spent 3300 on this deal..
 
Not knowing anything other than what you shared... The shop screwed up. If they wanted to button it up, they need to fix it.
 
Not sure which rockers you're using, but if they are the inexpensive Proforms, they are only recommended to 484 lift. If memory serves me, that cam, which I ran, have more lift??????
I had crane gold rockers which were nothing but problems for me, never stayed adjusted, broken adjusters...I went to crane ductile iron rockers, similar to the 273 adjustables, and have had no problems since. Haven't touched them in 2 years!!!!!! That's with a 528 solid cam..
Good luck with the shop...

Bob
 
Crane had issues with adjusters that were not hardened and well known, and they were replacing them for free. They've been fine for the last year or two.
 
They never broke, but when I replaced them there were marks on the body where the spring/retainers were hitting. Never checked the oil. I did grind(clearance) the under side of the new rockers on the spring side. That was recommended by Crane... I would talk to the builder, at least they should flush the motor and pull a main and rod bearing..
Just a note, friend of mine had an engine built by a well known shop. On break in on the shops dyno, the cam failed!!!!!!!!!! They flushed the motor replaced the cam. Back on the dyno... this time they wiped out the new crank!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just my 2cts...
Bob
 
Hopefully the shop won't skimp on repairing it because it sounds like it needs to come apart and be totally cleaned out. Hopefully they will stand behind their work and fix it. They put it together, they own the problem.
 
Sorry about the mess. I hope the shop is cooperative.

As a separate question, I'm wondering why you have aluminum rockers? It's my understanding that steel rockers are best in a street or street/strip engine, and aluminum rockers are not durable long-term. Just curious... you shouldn't have had a problem either way...
 
I have the Crane Gold Race Rockers and I have run them on the 340 with a Clay Smith .525"/308 [email protected]" solid w/10.5-1 comp and, currently, a milder Crane hydraulic w/10-1 and no problems with either. Set em and forget em! You should have no problem with any of them if everything is set-up correctly.

At the same time, if you can get your hands on em, a set of the iron ones from Crane or the factory 273 (preferablly Crane) will work just fine. They are more forgiving of misalignment issues by design. They have a large scrub radius that really helps with that. The roller tip has to be pretty perfectly located on the valve to function correctly and last. That is all in the engine builders hands to make sure it's all correct.
Hopefully the shop makes this right.
It would not have caused this but, do those rockers have the little needle bearings inside the shaft hole?
 
fourspeed said:
Sorry about the mess. I hope the shop is cooperative.

As a separate question, I'm wondering why you have aluminum rockers? It's my understanding that steel rockers are best in a street or street/strip engine, and aluminum rockers are not durable long-term. Just curious... you shouldn't have had a problem either way...
Click to expand...

Mercruiser uses Crane Gold Race Rockers on their high end boat engines with 5 year warranties!

I had Comp Magnum Rockers years ago because I believed that hype. Comp said that crap in their ads back in the day so I bought a set. The roller pins wiggled loose and I even had one snap off!!! They replaced them but they wiggled loose again. Not my idea of quality. I have run the same set of Crane Gold Race Rockers on 2 different 340 builds with no issues! I didn't even have to do any shimming on the shaft. I just ordered the correct length pushrods and installed as recommended. One was a solid the other hydraulic, both over .500" lift. Set em and forget em.
 
I think it has more to do with usage. If you are rebuilding a performance engine, that has heavy springs, and you plan on running it for 50K miles, then yes, steel rockers are better in the long term. Aluminum does have a shorter life span. but most builds now awill never see the high side of 20K miles in these cars. I wouldnt use aluminum rods, but I've used aluminum caps, and rockers, with no issues at all on engines that have come close to 18K in 8 years.
 
Everyone knows that they use aluminum rockers or cam followers on production engines now, right???

My 04 Neon and 00 Concorde both use them. The Chrysler has over 130,000 miles on it and the Neon is at almost 60,000 miles. Still working great, LOL.
3gears.gif


Soooo, what is the word on the engine, Dakota Don?
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