I fixed my oil leak yesterday coming from the valve covers. When I took the driver side one off, I happened to move the rockers or try to. Well, one that I tried moved a little bit, I thought that's odd. I checked the nut on the stud and it appeared loose as could be. So I had my brother fix that while I did the other valve cover gasket. Upon further inspection, he pulled the whole rocker stud out Some how it came loose, we put lock tite on all of them and torqued them to the heads recommendations.

Anyone experience this before? I'm going to pull the valve covers again in a few weeks.

 

Happened on my Cutlass before, except I didn't have the pleasure of an oil leak to let me discover the problem. After a low RPM breakdown, I reassembled everything and retourqed. Never happened again, but now I check every 2 months!

 

Are you running screw in studs or pull out studs?

 

Although your heads were purchased "assembled". It's up to you to clean, inspect and verify correct assembly and torque specs during the install. The rocker studs probabily were not torqued down . You're supposed to check and verify correct pushrod guideplate alignment during the install and then torque down the rocker studs. It's time you learned how to correctly adjust your rockers yourself too. It's not hard. I trust you changed the oil
cause antifreeze probabily got down in the oil pan when you pulled off the old heads. Hopefully the cam/lifters have not been damaged. Antifreeze in the oil is real hard on the bearings.

 

The heads came assembled, but didn't include studs and plates.
The heads were checked for the holes to be clean. And the rocker studs were torqued down correctly.

However, thinking back on it, that one rocker like you were saying about the pushrod clearance, that one I had to take the plate back off and move it a little for the pushrod to clear, maybe somehow I forgot to retorque that one stud. Hmmmm

I realize adjusting rockers isn't that hard, I've seen my bro do it a few times, but I'd rather trust him doing that than myself.

Yup, I changed the oil before we started it up. Put in crappy dino oil for about the first 50 miles then switched back to Mobil 1.

 

did it take care of the smoking exhaust???

 

Good stuff

 

For the first few mins it smoked, I guess still some left in the headers.

I was told though that it's running rich, as there seems to be a minor bit of blue smoke that will come out during idle. could a rich condition cause this? It doesn't happen under WOT to my knowledge.

 

if its blue its oil if its black its rich.. look closely

 

Kinda hard to tell sometimes (The Color) Mark, Why dont you just run that compression test and put your mind at ease? Its not much harder to do than changing sparkplugs... ..Does it happen after getting off the WOT ? (smoke)

How many miles on the motor now?..Did this just start after the head swap?

 

The smoke has gone now, I changed the header gaskets today as those were leaking too, LOL spent $35 at first on copper ones that didn't seal well. I found quite a bit of oil on the one gasket and more oil down near the exhaust ports that hadn't burned off yet.

I don't have a compression gauge, I could get one, but that will take a few weeks to get.

The motor has about 12k miles on it.

 

i had that problem --rocker arm stud pushing out-- heres what you do, ...if its a stud and not screw in that is....go get you an over sized one, ...smallest over sized one you can get, ...stick it in the freezer for 24 hours, and itll contract, ...tap it in the stud hole and wait a few hours, the metal will expand while warming up to outside temp and you will be good....that or pin the stud into the boss.....at a \ angle...... like that ---> \

 

Glad it cleared up Mark...First time Ive heard of this one...but I'm glad it worked out for ya...any new time slips since the swap?

 

I'm hoping to make it in about 2 weeks.