350 Buck Truck Project engine revival

I having all kinds of cell phone issues right now, Robert clued me in this morning that it wasn't working! I thought I had that fixed (again) but obviously not. It will be permanently fixed in 60 more days when the at&t service I've had for nearly 20 years is terminated, between the "system" issues here in the valley and the constant nokia hardware/firmware issues, I'm done.

The strange exhaust note you are hearing is caused by one (or more) cylinders not having correct valve timing taking place. That in turn is caused by the lifter issue (which May not be a lifter but actually be a valve/guide issue).
 
rusty Scout said:
sorry Robert. I stand corrected about lifter pre oiling and please bear with me. Lots of emotions and head scratching going on here.
Click to expand...

No need to apologize, we all have had our moment under the gun in engine building whether from parts defects of personal f'ups. I left gallery plugs out on one of my own. Had to tear it down and fix it. What a pita but I learned my lesson.

So don't sweat this engine crap. You'll work through this issue in time.

You are not the first or last to struggle with IH lifter noise issues on a new engine. If I could I'd be there helping you I would in a hurry but distance makes that impossible.

:icon_up:
 
Well the day was burned up on the camper shell. New clamps and tape. During this we ran the motor a few times in hopes of a responsive lifter but it did not happen. So today off comes the valve cover again for lifter removal.

Is it possible to fish out that one lifter without removing the entire rocker shaft? I suppose that will be self explanatory but thought I would ask first.

I was at the shop late night perfecting and modifying my rocker arm tool for removing and slipping in pushrods so it can work in a cramped engine compartment.

Also someone commented on the second video that there was not nearly enough oil being pumped over those boat rockers. I can assure you that a fair amount spilled over and onto the ground.
 
rusty Scout said:
Is it possible to fish out that one lifter without removing the entire rocker shaft? I suppose that will be self explanatory but thought I would ask first.
Click to expand...

Yes I suppose so. If you can compress the valve spring and pop the pr out, the rocker should be able to rock out of the way enough to expose the lifter acess hole in the head. Probably can do it and leave the rocker assy totaly tight. Make sure the valve is completely in a closed event position.

rusty Scout said:
Also someone commented on the second video that there was not nearly enough oil being pumped over those boat rockers. I can assure you that a fair amount spilled over and onto the ground.
Click to expand...

In the context of your problem, your noise has nothing to do with top end oiling. As you know the lifter galleries are a totaly different source.

Once you pull the lifter and inspect the face for damage ( I don't expect any) try to compress the plunger to see if it holds pressure (probably won't) and disassemble it. Then take a close look at the check valve and spring on the bottom of the plunger. See if you find any debris that might hold it open. Hoping you find an obvious failiure mode condition that you can repair and reinstall that one and not a new one. It has bedded in on the lobe and will give you the best life.
 
It took about 3 ten second crankings to see a nice flow of oil out of that lifter bore gallery with lifter removed. No junk came out just oil. But check this out::

I think what we got here is collapsed lifter and blown out glass pack. The lifter was uncompressable by hand with a pushrod and the snap ring was easily removed. No plunging action at all. Cam appeared normal. Cam surface on lifter normal. Push rod staright. Got lifter to work on bench with solvent. Cleaned and lubed with break free gun spray. Soaked and plunged in 5w-20 oil just prior to install. Fired it up and the loud clatter of a collapsed lifter seems gone. Exhaust note still a little funky but I think its a blown old glass pack on the passenger side. So I think its safe to say that for the moment no more lifter noise. Tomorrow road test to the muffler shop. Too early to celebrate will no more real soon.
 
Last edited:
Good deal... I hoped it wasn't with that valve. Now you need to get some real mufflers installed. You going with turbo-style mufflers? The ones I had installed at mufflers unlimited are still going strong, after 15 years.
 
Robert kenney said:
thanks, but the guy behind the wrench deserves the ata-boy.
Click to expand...

You're too modest... I was one of those guys wrenching on this thing, and you were the first one to come up with the theory of the (bullshit, unconscionable) defective lifter out of the box.
 
The brief version: I had a very good running normal quiet engine and exhaust for about 15 minutes tonight. I got 3 miles away and the problems came back. It might be possible that the stash of epwi ha855 lifters in the oakland warehouse are a bad batch. I bet they cant remember when the last time it was that the filled any orders for International engine parts. Another full set is on the way from epwi tacoma but this botched job is far from being out of the woods. Eriks running 345 in his parts Scout is starting to look very attractive because I have a feeling that this 304 is going to have to be removed and torn down and fully re-inspected again. That part of the sonya motor write up about starting with a bare block and getting every gallery and orifice hospital clean May be the downfall here. I left that up to my builder and I May be paying the price for that by not doing it personally or having someone like Jeff or micheal take care of business. There are a lot of maybes going on here the first time around. Anyway still plugging away at it. Here is the story of the last few days.


Well remember when I said it was too early to celebrate. It was. It was late that night after I thought I had #2exh pumped up on the bench so I only got a chance to run it about 2 minutes. Sitting behind the windshield + wishfull thinking = I was convinced that the exhaust was quieter and the clacking was greatly reduced.

Ran it the next morning and very loud clack and brapbrapbrap. Went to the muffler shop and they said save your money. The concern there was bent valves and they did not want to get involved yet.

Started down the street to stop by the machine shop to surprise them and the tranny had a brainfart. Felt like the brakes were on. Luckily I was only doing 10 miles and hour. Made me stop though. Happened a few more times and then started behaving again. I need to hire po exorcist. My tranny shop said maybe the low band circuit malfunctioned. No love from this truck yet.

Showed up at the machine shop and brapbrapbraped super loud through there roll up door. A surprised look turned into some bummed out expressions real quick. Obvious that a few lifters were not working but their main concern was that I bent all the valves when I was doing the pushrods.

They agreed to order me some fresh lifters and to have them for me by the next day. No delivery was made so I had to make the run to epwi oakland will call during the precommute. They only had 8 on hand so I took em.

Got home at 430pm and got to work on the bench. Reassembled the original #2exh and no matter how long I pumped or how I pumped it in 5w-20 with a pushrod no bubbles and it would hit bottom each time. Definitely not working again. Before I had burped it in kerosene and then 5w20 and it stayed pumped up long enough to install it.

Took a new lifter out of the box. It was another repak epwi ha-855. It pumped up on the first few tries in 5w-20. A couple of nice steady strokes led to a nice stream of bubbles until it became firm. I put that in at #2exh and started it up. That one fixed but wait its still clacking but less frequently. Turns out #4intake lifter was also collapsed. Took it out and went to the bench with it. No matter what I did: pumping technique, kerosene or 5w20 it would not burp or bleed any bubbles. After 15 minutes of working it I gave up. I went to the box of fresh lifters. Another dud. Tried again another dud. Tried again and this one bleed its air after just a few slow strokes in oil. After trying to make sure it was good I put it in #4int and fired it up. A very quiet clicking slowly disappeared and the exhaust became quiet. I made sure to sit out on the right side of the truck this time. I was amazed.

Cool. Test drive but getting dark. Hit the lights. No headlights. Got out tweaked the ground a little on the rad support. That fixed it. Back in the truck still good. Drive about 3 miles and suddenly loud clacking and brapbrapbrap pipe but with a noticeable misfire. On the right side again. Drive it towards home, stalls in a very bad place just before a steep crest. Feels like its out of gas. Try it again in a few minutes and comes to life sputtering. Get home. Park it let it cool for an hour. Pull the valve cover and rocked the rockers by hand. #2exh solid. #4intake a little slack, #6exh collapsed lifter #6int collapsed lifter. The rest solid.

More headscratching. I swear it ran quiet and smooth for 15 minutes and then 3 miles. Either there is trash in the lifter gallery or I was the lucky bastard happened across a batch of bad lifters. I think they have a big carton of these in oakland and they are packing them there. At least thats what the epwi lady said today: "sorry I took so long in back but I had to make a box and print a label".

I have to assume that I need to find another batch of lifters that are known to be good. I let my machine shop get the parts and I was out of my mind to not insist that they only deal with ihonlynorth. I am going to make the run to ihonlynorth in the crownvic today if possible and try to get a set of lifters. To eliminate bad lifters I think that is what I May have to do. I am not in the mood to pull the engine for a complete tear down to verify that there is not crap in the galleries.

Besides bad lifters and oiling problems what else could it be. Could it be the brad penn 30wt break in oil? Is it too thin or foaming? Is there metal trash in the oil and causing collapsed lifters? I never found any obvious debris in the lifters I took apart. I am running 6 quarts but I did do an oil filter change so I added a quart of 10w-40 chevron that was laying around. That makes about 6.5qts now in the engine,,, oil pressure seems good but drops quite a bit when hot at low idle. Maybe the oil pump is not doing the job.

What is the next step? Running out of ideas here.


I pulled the fuel prefilter (more of a reusable inline filter with a fine screen that can be cleaned between tank and pump). It had about a 1/4 teaspoon of tank trash in it. The other inline fuel filter near the distributor appeared clean of particles but discolored in a rusty sort of way. Looks like several hours of messing with the tanks. Lucky I scored a couple of nice looking ones with the camper shell.

This truck May be cursed. I had a 68 charger r/t that I swear was cursed. That po was serving a life sentence in leavenworth for some kind of military crime and his Dad sold it to me cheap After the trash can fire in the garage that scorched the back of it.(cheap ~that project cost me my beloved pretty nice 69 coronet r/t that only fouled a spark plug once in a while even though it's po hit a buffalo in wyoming with it....I sold the coronet to finance the bullitt charger build which was a real bad idea) .............................but that's another car story from hell that incidentally got me out of mopars and into ihc.
 
Last edited:
I would like to have the #2 exh lifter in my hands to inspect for the cause. Only way to know is to inspect all pieces of the lifter....


How far are you preloading the lifter? Have you checked with an adjustable pushrod?
 
Lifters don't go "bad" sitting in packaging on a shelf unless they got wet and corrosion has formed.

While movement in inventory regarding IH-pattern lifters is certainly not what it is for many applications, I can assure you there is "turnover" in not only the epwi warehouse but all other wholesalers that keep these items on hand. There are eight epwi locations within their master distributor chain, they also operate several smaller jobber warehouses around the western u.s.

These lifters (and all others) are normally sold in paks of 100 to engine builders, that is the epwi-preferred type of order. There is a major cost differential in the volume buy. And we do not blame stuff like this on the wholesale parts supplier who simply resells manufactured goods. The source for those lifters is johnson, they are the folks who should be contacted about any technical issue, though epwi technical assistance can certainly facilitate that.

The only way to determine what is happening with the lifter is to carefully disassemble and inspect each item as removed from the engine and do a complete analysis. The results of inspection determine root cause of any suspected issue. And yes, there can be manufacturing issues with any part, but condemning any part before a complete failure analysis is performed is simply the shotgun approach. If each component of the lifter is carefully measured and compared with a known serviceable part of the exact same batch (not an old lifter from some other engine), you will find a reason that it is not holding oil, it will not be "bad" without being able to determine what is wrong with any of the tiny parts that make up the assembly.

The oil you are using has nothing to do with this unless it's contaminated in some fashion. Hundreds of similar engines are built every month with simply "oil" dumped in with some white box filter and then run, no special attention paid to anything.

Any domestic engine that has a non-adjustable valve train is subject to this same issue. Folks that build Ford motors (with rocker shafts) day in and day out have this same situation even though the actual lubrication scheme of the Ford product is not anywhere close to what is used in the IH sv. But the fords do have their own particular "issues" regarding valve train lubrication.

The pushrod length and lifter preload simply must be checked in this case. I suspect that the actual problem has been compounded by the "installed valve height" after the head work was performed is not where it needs to be for use with a valve train that contains all new parts. This factor is critical and is the exact reason more than a few folks experience this same condition and always blame the lifter noise on a "bad lifter". The installed valve height is the only thing that has changed regarding valve train dimension in this engine assembly.

Continuing to throw lifters at this engine without determining root cause is only going to extend frustration.
 
One bad thing about big manufacturers is that they very sendom have time to investigate or go through a proper failiure anaylisis on such a small item. I want one of the failed lifters in my shop to do a proper investigation into the root cause of your issue.

Right now I am considering a failed oil filter and particulate getting into the lifter valving. But I can't say till I see a lifter.

So I repeat please send me one of the failed lifters as it is when pulled. Don't take it apart.
 
Now that you've driven a 'good' motor a short distance and then had new problems, I agree with mm that we May not have considered pre-load.
However, I have to disagree about defective new units, when there have been multiple brand new lifters that will not even release any bubbles when soaking & stroking...

Does anyone think we should get the dissolved pre-lube out of there, with an oil change at only 2 hours runtime?
 
First thing I do after breaking in a new cam and 30 more minutes of running is to change the filter only but I break in on vr1 not a break-in oil. In your case I would dump the oil also.

The theory is that the cam moly lube/ bolt moly along with particulate generated during the first 60 minutes can partially obstruct the oil filter element enough to cause the bypass to open when cold thus allowing the trapped particulate to circulate. So for $5.00 it is added protection that I don't skip. I don't tell/recommend this to anyone except for engines that I build. This case is a special one due to the lifter issues.
 
Alright Robert. I can make that happen just pm me your info. So its weird that the whole thing was quiet and nice for 15 minutes.

I was assured that the head surfaces and block surfaces were not altered in any way that would affect the valve train yesterday. I brought up the fact that these pushrods were checked for length and straightness by dude who gave them to me. And then I double checked them. Also the filter is the low grade carquest affina white filter.

I am not familiar with any methods of preloading lifters. How can I check installed valve height now?
 
Last edited:
eldo said:
now that you've driven a 'good' motor a short distance and then had new problems, I agree with mm that we May not have considered pre-load.
However, I have to disagree about defective new units, when there have been multiple brand new lifters that will not even release any bubbles when soaking & stroking...

Does anyone think we should get the dissolved pre-lube out of there, with an oil change at only 2 hours runtime?
Click to expand...

"pre-lube" applied out of the tube or squeeze bottle (no matter what the brand is) is nothing more than a very viscous form of a high quality lubricant with various extreme pressure additives. It's formulated to be totally soluble in engine oil while leaving the trace elements of the ep additives (zinc, moly, secret formula unobtanium, etc. Embedded in the metallic surfaces.

I personally run fresh motors a thousand miles or more before changing oil and filter. If it's suspected that there was trash left in the oil galleries, then cutting the filter open and performing an analysis will confirm that.

30w, 10w-30, 15w-40, straight 50w, no matter what viscosity oil is used, a lifter which is either not assembled correctly, is out of tolerance as far as it's individual components are concerned, or is "too short" in the entire valve train stack (including pushrod length, rocker distortion, rocker shaft wear, rocker stand height (entire rocker assembly) is not going to be able to work correctly and maintain a slight negative valve clearance/pre-load.

I've installed many hydraulic lifters over many years and had many act stupid for a given time period.

Wanna confirm rocker assembly "height"? Then swap rocker assemblies side-to-side and see if the affected cylinder/valve "moves".

Use the depth gauge portion of a dial caliper to ballpark the valve stem height of all valves (not just the problem child) once the rocker assembly is removed, and record the data for analysis.

There is a mechanical reason this problem exists, that can be rectified once it's identified, yawl just ain't found it yet and the shotgun approach is gonna eat ya up!

Has an attempt been made to collapse each valve/rocker/lifter using downward pressure of a hammer handle while the engine is running? If the lifter can be compressed fairly easily while under gallery oil pressure, then that is a problem and idle quality/manifold vacuum will go to hell immediately until the pressure is eliminated.
 
rusty Scout said:
alright Robert. I can make that happen just pm me your info. So its weird that the whole thing was quiet and nice for 15 minutes.

I was assured that the head surfaces and block surfaces were not altered in any way that would affect the valve train yesterday. I brought up the fact that these pushrods were checked for length and straightness by dude who gave them to me. And then I double checked them. Also the filter is the low grade carquest affina white filter.

I am not familiar with any methods of preloading lifters. How can I check installed valve height now?
Click to expand...

If a valve job was done on those heads, then the geometry of the valve train was affected!!!!

If all valves were simply "cut" (faced" on a valve machine), then they seat deeper into the valve seat. If the valve seats were "cut" (either with a carbide tool or a grinding stone), then the valves seat deeper into the seat. Combine those two factors and the valve stem is then too long (or "high") above the pads where the rocker stands seat. To compensate, a machinist must assemble each valve and measure (using a special micrometer) the "installed height" of the tip of the valve where the rocker pad touches it. Then the valve must be removed and the tip faced on a grinding attachment, re-installed and checked again. There is a nominal tolerance for this dimension, but many times machinists shortcut this stuff and do not check this. Because the installed valve height is far more critical on an engine with a non-adjustable valve train, if this dimension is not kept within tolerance, ya end up with a valve hitting a piston, or a valve assembly with noise because the lifter has no pre-load. In this case, it's entirely possible too much material was removed from the valve stem tip of the affected item and the lifter has no discernible pre-load. Measure it to conform or deny that possibility.

If this same issue occurs on a chev motor with rocker studs and "adjustable" hydraulic lifters, ya simply "adjust the noise away. That is impossible to do on a rocker shaft engine with no provision for adjustment. How do you adjust a lifter assembly that has no pre-load??? Use a longer pushrod (by a few thousandths once the optimum length is calc'd. But...that is only a bandaid, the real issue is the assembled valve height....or the base circle on the cam is too small.

You can check the base circle on several/all cam lobes by setting up a long-plunger dial indicator in the lifter cup. After having installed a few "performance" cams over the years without verifying lift on each lobe, I'd be far more inclined to point a finger at a cam instead of a lifter. But if ya don't check this stuff when doing an engine, you will not see it until shit like this occurs.
 
Michael, if the valve stem is "a little" too long, does that place the lifter cup out-of-range and prevent the lifter from pumping up, or lose it's oil after installation?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top