Woohoo! Finally jumped my timing chain!

['64 Cuda]

".....aluminum and nylon (WHY did they use this!??)."

It was supposed to make the engine quieter. If a person doesn't want to spring for the double roller setup on a stock rebuild, they can usually ask for a "heavy duty" or "truck" set. These are usually all steel.

 

[C130 Chief]

Generic NAPA replacements have an iron cam gear. I'm not sure you can buy a new nylon toothed gear.

 

[3404spdvaliant]

I doubt you bent the valves at there mere .399 lift , they hardly get past the deck.
Get yourself a piece of garden hose duct taped on to a high power shop vac ,and with car lifted a lil, spray non clor brake cleaner into the pan through where the timing cover went to wash the crap over to one side and then vac it out.
It's all/mostly in the sump.

You can drop the pan but -center link, check plate, raise engine, fighting with the seals and all for someone who might not be mechanically inclined does not work well and can lead to a dead driveway ornament.

 

[2 Darts]

I think the concern over dropping the pan is the need to answer the question. "Where did the nylon from the cam gear go?" It did not go away, for sure. It's probably in the pan where it could get sucked up into the screen on the oil pump pickup (assuming the screen is intact). If the nylon has been sucked onto the screen or is wedged in the pickup tube, oil flow is going to be restricted.

The old adage is true. Oil is the life blood of an engine.

 

[Dons67Barracuda]

if you advance the cam 4 degrees all you will loose will be 200-400 rpm on the top end of your power curve. you will gain quite a bit in bottom end power. what it does is incresses your Cylinder pressure. i did this in a truck years ago . i tried it both ways so i could feel the difference. since i have a Shop to play with my cars.

 

[MopaR&D]

All right, update. I drained the oil into clear jugs to await further testing, and I also poured gasoline down the front of the oil pan to wash the crap down out the drain hole (recommendation by Rick Ehrenberg), and I didn't see anything come out (the gas that came out the drain hole was also collected).

Before I did this I also tried cranking the engine with the cam and crank properly sync'd (with oil still in, of course) and it sounded pretty normal, with a small (but maybe normal) "skip" every couple revolutions. I'm going to try taking a straight edge to the valve stems to see if any are out of place, then I might try to start the engine up for a little bit to see if it misses or there are any noises. If there are, I'm just going to go all-out (from my perspective) and pull the engine for a cleanup, re-ring, cam+lifters+springs, and recon'd 302 heads with a Performer intake and ThermoQuad.

 

[3404spdvaliant]

The skip sounds like a dead/weak hole.

 

[fishy68]

The skip sounds like a dead/weak hole.

That's what I was thinking.

 

[MopaR&D]

Checked the heights of the valve stems with a rigid ruler, and it seems some of them are down lower than they should be (of course I took the rocker shaft off first). Gonna do a compression test tomorrow and see what comes up, I'm gonna bet it's gonna be low on either cylinder 6 or 8 (didn't check the other side yet). Just in case I do have to go through the engine I bought a book on rebuilding Mopar small blocks and my neighbor up the street (Ford guy, cool though) said he has a hoist and will help me pull the engine.

 

[3404spdvaliant]

On the height thing remember some valves sink faster then others.

 

[MopaR&D]

It's confirmed, I'll have to pull the engine. I did a compression test on cylinders 2 and 8, and they were way different. Cylinder 8 was around 65 psi, #2 was around 105 psi. Oh well, at least I can clean the engine up and make it run well now.