Hot Rods Y-block Ford Tinny, Popping noise. Please Help

When I look at the rocker it looks like the adjustment on the broken one is a lot different than the others.

 

If the engine ran for more than a few minutes everything up top should be well coated with oil, everywhere, it doesn't evaporate. I don't see any! That may not be the cause of the Unpleasantness, but it's something to investigate.

Somebody mentioned checking for valve spring bind at full lift. That would do it. Those rocker arms are pretty tough.

 

I don't think so. There are only 2 normal Y block styles. The nut lock like these and a self lock with no nut that are not desirable. There does seem to be different amounts if thread showing and mine are all real close in appearance when set at .019"
I also agree with an earlier posting that ends are usually the driest. They oil from the center cam bearing and both rockers are near center. Also the push rod is bent and they normally end up in the valley.

 

I'm kind of having second thoughts about posting this, but here goes.

I'm going to try to say this as un-sarcastically as possible. I'm not trying to bust your hump here.

But if you can't determine which rockers are intake or exhaust then it may be time to bring in some more experienced help to diagnose and correct this problem. It will likely save you a lot of time, money and aggravation in the long run. Maybe there's another HAMBer in your area that could help walk you thru this before any more damage is done.

Don't take any of this personally. I'm just trying to be as pragmatic as possible about what I'm seeing in this situation. And you're a long way from Indiana.

 

As I stated on an earlier post, finding people locally who are familiar with these engines has been a challenge. I honestly have no idea if there are any HAMBer's in this area. I would assume they would have already chimed in. Upon further inspection, they are both exhaust valves. I understand that it is difficult to diagnose a problem over the internet without actually hearing the noise the engine is making or getting your hands dirty. These things take finesse, it's not like a newer engine that gives you a diagnostic trouble code and a guide to follow. I don't have the experience with an engine 60+ years old that had a 10 year production run, so that's why I'm reaching out.

 

There seems to be a fair number of members here who claim to be from N. Carolina. Maybe listing a more specific city or location in your profile will spark some interest from someone nearby. Though you might also have to entice them with beer and pizza.

 

Updated to a more specific location. I have no issue providing beer, pizza, discounts at the dealership to anyone who could assist me. I just really want to drive my car again.

 

If you're not familiar with y-block Fords you need to check out the layout of the intake ports on the heads and intakes.



That should help explain the odd arrangement of intake and exhaust rockers.

 

By asking questions on here you're doing the right thing - tapping in to the experience of others. Nobody is born with the knowledge of setting up a Y-Block, it comes from making an effort to learn and get your hands dirty, which you appear to be doing.
I've built a few Y-Blocks using used parts from various junk engines and its not always been plain sailing.
I can't offer any reason why that's rocker has snapped other than it obviously had some excess forces pushing against it.
For valve lash you've followed an excellent Youtube clip -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=SqG-Q_kVI3s&feature=emb_logo
Doing this as per this YouTube clip really should have eliminated the lash as being the problem. So something-else going on that is difficult to diagnose without having the engine in front of us.
If I was in your position the first thing I'd do is take off the rocker shaft and attempt to push each of the valves down with the palm of my hand. Takes a bit of force but you should be able to manually push it down temporarily. If the valve is bent and jamming it will feel different to push than others that aren't sticking. You won't be doing this with the engine hot, and it is possible as things heat up a problem of sticking valve would be worse, but it might give you some idea if a valve is a problem.
If its not that then I would be taking the timing cover off and double checking its all good there.
It would really help to have a mechanic or a fellow petrol head with some hands on experience with you when you look at it to offer a second opinion. Hopefully a HAMBer will step up.
As for the oiling - Does look a bit dry.
Before firing up again, get yourself on ebay or down a junk yard and pick up a cheapo worn out Y-block distributer. Take the gear off the end and fit it so its not engaging the cam gear, ensuring the rod that drives the oil pump is engaged.
Stick a drill on the top end (Form memory I think it needs to be in reverse for it to rotate the right way, but check). After a spinning it a minute or so with the rocker covers off it should look like this -


No oil could be something simple like the oil pump drive rod not engaging for some reason (I've seen different length ones ), or a seal not fitted right on the pipe to the oil pump so it sucks in air. Knowing you have oil up top before firing it gives real peace of mind!
Over here in UK there are even less people around who know these engines, but I'm sure you wouldn't have to travel too far out there to find someone with a similar engine, and perhaps a bit more experience with working on them. Good Luck! Keep at it.

 

Funny you should say that... they are the same as a SBC. I’m assuming the owner of the engine could see the valve rocker is directly above the exhaust port.

 

Over on another site he has stated the engine has an Isky Cam with 135# springs on the seat and he used never sieze in the assembly of the rocker system.

First and foremost it’s an air pump and no more different than any other one. An overhaul manual is available in reprint for 20$ so there is no excuse to assemble it as a Chevrolet/Olds/Cadillac. I would no more try an LS engine without a book than jump off a bridge. And it sat for 6 months.

From now on I’ll just watch...

 

Sorry about the trouble .
I could see the two broken rockers,,,,but there is one that has a large crack in the adjustment area of the rocker,,,,,,split all the way through .

And I’m pretty certain they are all exhaust rockers ,,,that doesn’t bode well .
To look at the pics,,,,the heads look like they have very good springs ,,,keepers and retainers .
And the rockers themselves look like they were refurbished very well before hand .
I’m not trying to beat you up,,,,it takes a lot of courage to come on here and ask questions and show pics of broken parts .

I am curious if all this happened after the adjustment,,,or was on the way to breaking before you pulled the covers to do valve adjustment ?
Like I said,,,the heads look very nice .

You did say that after the valve adjustment the engine didn’t want to turn over .
I wonder if it was not really the battery causing that ?
Could there have been something like the retainers bottoming on the valve guides,,,,causing the engine to lock up ?
If the adjustment was not made on the base circle,,,,,the valves would be very tight and could bind up on the valve guide ,,,,,,causing a failure like the pics show ?

If you could remove a spring on one of the broken ones,,,,,you could see if the retainer touched the guide .
Good luck man ,,,hope it works out .

Tommy

 

Also the reason I asked is,,,,,,looks like the adjusters on the intakes have an extra couple of threads showing .
Although that is possible,,,,but ,,,usually,,,,,the adjusters will be fairly equal after adjustment .
You know,,,,the same or about the same sticking out above the rocker ?

Tommy

 

I'm going to check on that third rocker when I get home this evening. On closer inspection of the photo, I think it may be a casting ridge. We held a flashlight up behind the phone, so it may just be a gnarly shadow. I looked at the area around where the rocker broke and I don't see any sign of something slamming into it. There are no hammer marks or anything like that. I think that may be what's going on with the adjusters as well. It may just be the angle at which the photo was taken, because it looked to me that they were fairly close. I did have to remove the assemblies at one point reassemble them correctly when I found I wasn't getting oil to the valvetrain. Which is why I'm so adamant about the assemblies getting oil, because once I installed them with the oil hole in the shaft lined up correctly with the oil passage in the head, the valvetrain had oil up to it in 10 seconds of priming with a drill. It's certainly possible that the pushrod wasn't quite set dead center on the lifter and it slid off. My buddy and I did an initial start up. Ran pretty well, approximately 50lbs of oil pressure. Adjusted the valves once when the engine warmed up a little. Then the vehicle sat for a week or two while I took care of some other stuff. They were starting to get a little noisy towards the end of the initial start up. So when my buddy came back a few weeks later, we started with valve adjustment. He's performed the adjustments each time, and he's way more experienced with these engines than I am. He adjusted the valves on my old engine as well, which I never encountered an issue with. Moved on to carb adjustment and then it started making all kinds of noise. The engine was being drawn down from cranking and cranking and cranking and it running for 5 seconds and then cutting off. It cracks quickly now since I bought a battery maintainer. I went to Isky's website earlier because there was some fear that the springs were too stiff for the cam, but the springs, pushrods, and lifters are all the ones Isky recommends for that cam.

 

Oops! You're right. E II EE II E for both engines. I let myself get distracted by the stacked intake ports on the y-block.

 

You will not see any marks anywhere near where the rocker broke.You would see them on the valve stem, valve seal or retainer by removing the lock and retainer and looking also at the seal. In the picture that I posted earlier and circled the area around the adjuster and lock not where the adjuster goes through the rocker is a possible crack. Look in this area before you refire it as there may be more bad rockers. Where these all new rocker arm assemblies or refurbished? If new what brand and where were they manufactured?

 

Please bear with me I have no people skills, stop, cease and desist , something is not playing nice with everything else, having no idea what was done to this engine during the rebuild and assembly make for a real crapshoot on recommendation for solution to the obvious problem. Let’s start with the block, I expect this is an over bore 292 but what else has been done to it?

 

I was looking at the amount of threads below the rocker arm. Was this rocker adjusted because valve not closing and the extra adjustment cause retainer to guide contact or spring stack?

 

It was more that it's curious the broken ones were adjacent to the exhaust riser on each side, Ive owned a scad of Y-blocks but never seen anything like this.cracked ones

 

I will ask again... you put in a higher lift cam. did your or your engine builder measure the clearance between the retainer and valve guide at full lift? Also the clearance between the valve spring coils at full lift? Every time someone brought me an engine that broke more than one rocker on the same engine it always turned out to be a clearance problem

 

This is an interesting thread...The second engine I ever rebuilt was a Y -Block (the first being a flat head)...during the assembly of the Y-Block, I had the engine upside down on a workbench. When it came time to install the timing chain, the procedure was to count the number of timing chain links between the crank gear and the cam gear.

Because the engine was upside down, I counted the links on the wrong side of the gears. Interestingly, I managed to get the engine to run but only to about 1500 rpm. I was a 16 year old kid that thought I knew it all until my Dad intervened and figured out my problem in a couple of minutes.

Although the engine ran, thankfully I never bent any valves or damaged any other valve train parts. I wonder if this is a similar case of mistaken cam/crank timing assembly? Just saying...

 

Ok, so this is the plan for now. I have drained the fuel out of the tank, just in case the fuel is starting to go bad. I have new pushrods ordered. The rockers that were installed were the higher lift, 1.54 ratio rockers, which is what the cam specs are based off of. I removed the rockers off of my old core, they are the lower lift, 1.43 ratio rockers. I am going to reface and then reinstall these rockers with the new pushrods. I will then rotate the engine over by hand and check for any interference or coil bind. I will keep everyone posted.

 

If you want any 1.54's, send me a pm, got lots of them.

 

Update: I got 8, 1.43 ratio rockers resurfaced and installed them on one rocker shaft and then reassembled a shaft with 1.54 rockers to check for coil bind. The isky valvesprings are a dual spring. The outside spring does not bind, but the inside spring does, with either ratio. I know the heads have been milled down, but unfortunately I have no idea how much. The block was resurfaced a minimal amount by my machinist, but it had already been rebuilt when I bought it, so there's no telling how much was removed. Looks like I'm going to have to have the valve spring seats milled down to make up the difference. Anyone know how to calculate the amount that has to be removed?

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How about you just pull the inner springs. Milling the heads would not cause coil bind. Are the retainers stepped so the installed height is less than the outer springs?

 

Contact Isky and ask about the inner spring coil bind, they may have a cutter you can rent or ask if there is a suitable set of single springs available.
Bent pushrods and broken rockers almost always indicate some kind of mechanical interference.


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Yes,,,inner spring is the issue sounds like .
You can also just swap out the inner with some that are shorter ,,,there are lots of different springs available.

Tommy

 

Sent a message to Isky. We'll see what they say and I'll report back.

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Sounds like the heads are coming off, so a couple thoughts.

There's a machined pad on the head, measuring it will tell you how much they've been milled. They'll know at http://forums.y-blocksforever.com/default.aspx what that measurement is.

It's not unknown for the dampener to slip on yblocks, meaning you might not have the timing marks correct. If that's how you found top dead center for timing or valves you could be off.

Lots of guy running various Isky cams over at yblocksforever, and this is the first spring interference problem I've noticed. There's also another item (I don't clearly recall it) regarding binding from the retainer to the top of the valve guide. You'll get that answer over there also.

 

I have a thread on yblocksforever.com already. The dampner is brand new and the timing is correct.

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