I thought this was really neato. 15,000,000.
FIFTEEN MILLION.... where did they all go??????????
That's ninety million rocker arms... one for every four people on the entire country...
Some of the machines that made those slant 6 engines is still in use today...
They adapt it for the new engines.... Whether it needs replacing or not....
There was a machine on their minivan cam line that was sooo obsolete and they wouldn't buy a new one to replace it... The electrical control was obsolete and was not available to be replaced.... They found out that they could take the electrical components out of a "speak and spell" to keep the machine running.... I literally saw a pallet sized container half full of gutted speak and spells.....
I've never seen anything like it.
and, I look at Auto Zone for a head gasket and they tell me that Fel Pro is the only manufacturer making a commercially-available head gasket for a slant six. Same answer at Advance Auto Parts... and Cometic will make me one if I want to pony up $3,000.00 for the tooling...
FIFTEEN MILLION.... where did they all go??????????
That's ninety million rocker arms... one for every four people on the entire country...
Have you ever compared the quality of Auto Zone and Advance vs NAPA? I ruined a headgasket one Saturday night setting the head down on my 97 360 so I got the one available from advanced t5he next day (Sunday)...JUNK! Same company (fel Pro) same number but half the thickness so I waited for Napa to open up on Monday. I could not believe the difference. SO check NAPA. I need to get a Valve cover gasket for my /6 in my 69 d200. I love me old truck. Oops maybe I hijacked the thread...uh was responding to the head gasket comment I guess.
I took the opportunity to work with twelve of these amazing little engineering marvels and create a set of 1.6:1 (nominal) ratio rockers for our turbocharged engine.
They are case-hardened at the factory, so the first thing I did was take them to a heat-treating facility to have the annealed so they could be machined and welded. Then, after that was done, I returned them to the same facility and had them returned to their original hardness.
My motivation for doing this was two-fold: I wanted a total valve-lift of just over .500" for our turbo motor. No such cam was available. In fact, the reason it was unavailable was that since turbo motors don't work well with long-duration cams (thy don't like the overlap from such cams; it allows the boost to be blown out the exhaust valve) the cam grinders all told me that the angle of attack at the lifter/cam lobe interface becomes too great with (turbo) short-duration/high lift cams, causing the edge of the lifter to dig into the lobe and will flatten a cam in short order.
The most lift I could get, without going to a roller or a mushroom lifter, was .484". I wanted more. No roller blanks are available (for under $1,000.00) so that was out... and the engine was already pretty much together, so I didn't want to mess with mushroom lifters, sooooo...
The only way I could figure to get it was with some 1.6:1 rocker arms. The commercially-available, aluminum ones they sell were about $600.00.
I decided that I could get it done cheaper, so I got a set of stock ones and modified them by taking a .110" slice out of the backside and had them re-welded (t.i.g. welded.)
I haven't had a chance to measure the actual lift, but geometrically, with the measurements I made, it should be close to 1.6:1, which would give me .516" at the valve.
We'll see...
Here are some pictures...
I guess I just shouldda entitled this "Bill's Rocker Arm Thread".
I guess I just shouldda entitled this "Bill's Rocker Arm Thread".
I just realized that I have totally hijacked this thread and for that I apologize. I won't write any more about rocker arms unless asked.
Sorry... :angry7:
Hey bill! Turbo slant six.Your lucky he didn't go off on his "T" word thesis.
Hey bill! Turbo slant six.
Hey bill! Turbo slant six.