CFD's Build Thread

[CFD]

Wasn't expecting this. The last few days my oil temps have been a bit high, everything else seemed normal, now and then it would throw a P219a which is typical in hot weather and traffic so I wasn't to concerned so I figured I'd go through everything. Pulled the valve covers and adjusted the valves, as usual they were really close, although one was a little looser than the rest but nothing that really struck me as unusual, this LLSR set up is low maintenance compared to conventional solid rollers. While I was in there I decided to do a leak down test on the cylinder that broke the rocker then figure while I'm there I'd test them all. Everything was great which was a relief because I was thinking maybe a valve got tweaked when the rocker broke. Inspected everything and put it all back together. Sounded and was running great again, then I noticed my oil temps getting higher, pushing 250-275, then every once in a while I would detect a slight ticking, by the time I got to the shop oil temps were nearing 300. The ticking now was consistent. Pulled the valve cover on the pass. side, the #4 intake was the loose one but felt fine, still at .000-.001 but I didn't notice any end play in the rocker so pulled the #4 rocker shaft and the rocker was binding so obviously it lost a bearing. Fortunately, unlike the stock rockers the bearings are trapped and stay in the rocker so nothing gets into the motor.

This motor now has 25,000 miles on it which if I recall is right around the time I lost my first stock rocker bearing when the motor was virgin.

Obviously, regardless of the rockers the bearings are still a weak link in the valve train.

When I broke the last rocker T&D told me that they were at the end of there life expectancy, my plan was to change to their steel bodied rockers over the winter but for now I'll replace this one and when I talk with them see if they have a set up with bushings.

[mlee]

I looked at the pic first and thought oh shit. Needle bearings in the motor.

Glad to hear you have it all contained. Hopefully repairs go well.

[CFD]

Originally Posted by mlee

I looked at the pic first and thought oh shit. Needle bearings in the motor.

Glad to hear you have it all contained. Hopefully repairs go well.

Yes, that's a good thing. Unlike the stock rockers the bearings are trapped and unless there's a catastrophic failure the bearings will stay put.

I should be up and running tomorrow, the customer service at T&D is excellent.

[CFD]

I'm in total disbelief right now. Got the new rocker and shaft in this morning. Put everything back together and took it for a short test drive and it was running great again. Brought it back to the shop and gave it a once over and everything was great. Had to take a ride about 20 miles away and everything is perfect, oil temps, sound, power everything is good. About 2 minutes from the shop I heard what sounded like a familiar sound and drop in oil pressure. Sure enough, another rocker arm broke in a different cylinder. Pulled it off, pulled the pushrod, rolled the motor over by hand and everything seems ok but I have a bad feeling, I could be mistaken but I don't recall oil on the plugs from the other broken rockers and this one had oil on it.

I was hoping to drive it easy and switch to the steel bodied rockers in a couple of months when the season winds down but I'm concerned that they have reached their life's end and I will see failure after failure. I'm hoping the steel bodied rockers are available and there is no further damage.

Tomorrow I will do a leak down check and see if anything turns up.

[davesnever]

That's too bad, I think I'd be swapping them all out ASAP before something catastrophic happens. That's way too many failures in such a narrow time period to trust them any longer.Looks like it broke at the oil passage which is probably the weakest point.

[CFD]

Originally Posted by davesnever

That's too bad, I think I'd be swapping them all out ASAP before something catastrophic happens. That's way too many failures in such a narrow time period to trust them any longer.Looks like it broke at the oil passage which is probably the weakest point.

It won't be started again until I swap them out, it's obvious they're done. I'm researching similar setups in steel. If they're available, I would like to get the T&D steel rollers, then I can reuse my stands and if individual rockers are available I can reuse the shafts and all other components, keeping costs down, rocker geometry and pushrod length will remain the same making it an easy swap.

Did a leak down test on it and it checks out good, still not sure why there was oil on the plug, it does have me concerned.

[CFD]

Well this sucks. T&D steel rockers are 9-10 weeks out. I've researched all other possibilities and there aren't many choices. Jesel's are not a direct fit and require head machining and are made to order as well. Crower is what I decided on. They're also made to order but should have them in 7-10 days. They're not cheap either.

In the process of researching the rockers I had a chance to talk to several tech's at various companies and the stainless steel rockers are the way to go for a street car or anything used for extended use. The aluminum rockers fatigued a lot faster than I expected but was of no surprise to anyone I talked to. It's also typical for exhaust rockers to break much quicker than intakes, which is true in my case as well, reason being there is much more heat transfer through the exhaust valves to the rocker. The other thing is that the steel rockers are more rigid than the aluminum ones and have less deflection which reduces fatigue. Something I also found interesting is that, although I didn't check with Crower but will when I get them, I did check with T&D and the steel rockers are very slightly heavier than the aluminum ones,2-3 grams, unless it's an all out drag motor where EVERYTHING counts, the weight savings, if any, is not worth the risk of a grenaded motor.

So after all this I found the time to pull the remaining rocker assemblies off and in doing so I found another bearing which was wiped out, this thing was a ticking time bomb without a doubt. I am now convinced that periodic rocker bearing replacement will be normal maintenance. The bearings are problematic on stock motors, that problem is much more serious as you go bigger with cams and spring pressures. The thing that sucks is where as there is minimal movement in the rockers when mounted on the car not only is removal needed but disassembly of the rockers as well, making this "normal maintenance" a pain in the ass.

The point is NO ALUMINUM ROCKERS ON A STREET CAR.

[CFD]

The new rockers came in today. They are very well designed. The rockers are the same length and ratio as the previous set up but they fit much differently. Because the aluminum rockers are much more bulky there are clearance issues these don't have, also the pushrods are much longer with this set up. A preliminary measurement came out to a 8.200 long pushrod, I'll double check that measurement tomorrow on both banks then order the pushrods. I was hoping to be running this weekend but looks like that's not happening.

Another thing I see as a big improvement over my previous set up and the trunion upgrades is that there is a thrust washer between the rocker/bearings and c-clips on all faces so if a bearing goes it stays trapped. the T&D rockers were like that on the intake but not the exhaust, fortunately I lost the bearings on the intake.

[hammdo]

Now those look awesome! Can really see the difference...

-Don

[CFD]

Originally Posted by hammdo

Now those look awesome! Can really see the difference...

-Don

They do look good, time will tell though.

A few things I've noticed. I like the T&D stands and mounting system better. The hardware is of the same quality but the stand mounting bolts on the T&D's have larger heads and the rocker shafts are secured with studs and twelve point nuts rather than allen bolts. Torque on the hardware is not that high so it most likely doesn't matter much as far as strength goes.

The T&D's have pressurized oiling, oil travels through the pushrods and through an internal hole to lubricate the bearing, they also have a small hole cross drilled to squirt oil on the valve tip/retainer for cooling. The Crowers relay on the oil that travels through the pushrods to flow down the rocker and feeds the bearing through a hole in the pocket. One thing I've noticed is that all the T&D rockers broke along the worm hole for the pressurized oiling, may be a weak point in them,


Got the stand heights and rocker geometry correct, just need pushrods now. The picture with the two different assemblies side by side shows the difference in the location of the rocker tip and you can see why the longer pushrods are needed. It looks like no problem but I'm hoping there are no clearance issues with the valve covers, if there is I will need to address that after I get the pushrods so I can roll the motor over.

[CFD]

Haven't posted in a while as there are big changes going on at CF&D. After 31 yrs at this location I am selling my property including my shop, house and store front. I decided to cut back on maintenance and repairs and concentrate more on specialty work and machining. I am hoping to find a similar set up but quite a bit smaller. I'm expecting to complete the sale at the end of October.

Because of this I will continue to fill orders until current stock runs out, and I'm getting low or out of some products. Manufacturing will begin again at the new location, if I find one. lol

Now for my car, it has been a challenge. Got the pushrods in and set up the Crower Rockers Arms. Very nice kit and fitment was great. Started the car and it sounded a little off but nothing that worried me. Went for a test ride and it was not quite right so I headed back to the shop, on the way it started running rough, smoking and oil temps were on the hot side. After it cooled down I pulled the plugs and 5 out of eight had a good amount of oil on them. I pulled the plug on the catch can and about a quart of oil came out. The test ride was about 4 miles. I then pulled the throttle body and the intake had an unbelievable amount of oil in it. Proceeded to do a leak down and found one cylinder with a valve not seating, odd thing it was #8, the rocker that broke was #3. I also found the #3 rocker wouldn't hold adjustment so I pulled the top end off. The cylinders were drenched in oil with a good amount of carbon build up which would be expected. The valve wasn't seating due to carbon on the seat. The #3 rocker broke bending the pushrod which caught the link bar on the lifter causing it to bind which explains it not holding adjustment. I cleaned everything up, glass beaded the heads for a thorough inspection, performed a fresh valve job and reassembled everything as I found nothing else wrong. There was some minor scuffing on the cylinder walls on two of the cylinders that broke rockers, I'd imagine due to high cylinder temps but not enough for me to be concerned about especially when the leak down in those two cylinders was good. Got a couple of new lifters and put it all together today. It seemed to be running great, back to the nice crisp exhaust note and throttle response was great again. I still was unsure of what all the oil was about, so I just went up the street and back, perhaps a half mile, it ran great. Pulled the plug on the catch can and a half coffee cup of oil came out. I have checked everything that would cause excessive blow by and nothing seems wrong.

Now with nothing wrong that I can find the only thing different from before I changed the rockers, is the rockers. Because of the height difference and angle difference between these and the previous T&D's I am thinking that, even though my valve covers are 3/4" taller than when stock that splash oil is filling the baffle in the cover causing the oil to get sucked into the catch can and eventually the intake. I'm going to check that out tomorrow because I can't come up with anuthing else.

[CFD]

Here's the bent tie bar and a shot of the intake, If it didn't have raised runners there would have been more oil in the cylinders.

[CFD]

Had a chance to check things out further and I can't find anything that would cause excessive blow by so I did some experimenting. I see np excessive pressure in the crankcase, everything seems fine, car is running great so I plugged the fitting on the intake that the catch can goes to and let the can breath to atmosphere and it no longer is filling with oil. I, at this point, am fairly confident the oil in the can is caused by splash oil from the rockers getting into the valve cover baffle then getting sucked into the can from intake vacuum. Because I have so much going on I'm going to leave it as is. When time permits I will take a good look at the valve covers and see if I can modify them to eliminate the problem but for now all is good.

On a side note, the Crower SS rockers are so much quieter than the T&D aluminum rockers it's very noticeable. I am running the same .000-.001 valve lash. The aluminum rockers are effected by heat more and flex, this is the known cause of fatigue in aluminum rockers. If theses last a reasonable amount of time it will have been worth the change.

[CFD]

Got just shy of 300 miles with the new rockers, the car is running great. As I mentioned before , these rockers are so much quieter. It is a huge difference