Last night I took the car for a little ride and it ran great. On the way home, I floored it and took it up to 5500 once, then drove past my house to give the motor a chance to run at lower rpm for a few minutes before shutting it off. A mile up the road, as I was doing about 15mph slowing down, the motor made a pop. I pulled out slowly and it kept popping and when it did, the car bucked or hesitated. It got worse and worse and I barely made it home. I pulled into the garage and there was a bunch of smoke. I couldn't tell what the smell was. I looked under the hood and underneath the car and nothing at all looked out of place. I started it back up and revved it and it sounded fine except that it sounds like a rocker arm may be ticking. I'm going to re-set my valve lash soon, but I'm totally clueless as to what brought on this chain of events. No SES light. Anybody have any ideas or similar experiences?

Oh yeah, it's a 355 TPI with forged pistons, moly rings, moly push rods, 1.5 stock rockers, hydraulic cam, blah blah blah. It ran great until this happened, although it did sound like one rocker arm was ticking a tad.
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[This message has been edited by Jim85IROC (edited June 01, 2001).]

 

Sounds like something happened to a rocker arm. Galled the ball, backed the nut off, broke a spring, something like that.

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"So many Mustangs, so little time..."
ICON Motorsports

 

That happend to me. The rocker arm stud popped out of the head. I had to get it pinned back in.

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www.geocities.com/camaro1j/myz28.html


406
accel supper ram
6000 rpm Hyd roller cam
afr heads
spohn torque arm and crossmember
t-56 trans, [wier racing bellhousing and hydrolic throwout bearing]
9" ME rearend 3.91 Gears

 

BTTT

 

when I first got the yellow car together with the cam and stuff i was using before i swapped it all out, it broke two rocker arms and acted like you were describing. Had nothing to do with your computer which is why you got no SES light. What rocker arms are you running, cause Id say its a pretty good guess that you either broke one, broke a valve spring, bent or jumped a pushrod or pulled a rocker stud as already mentioned.

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Currently own: 2001 Xtreme, 85 IROC, 87 S10
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More at: My Directory
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I pulled off the valve covers and everything looks fine. None of my pushrods are bent. I reset my valve lash. The one thing that's got me worried is that I've got a dry rocker arm. The lifter doesn't seem to be collapsed, but there's no oil coming up through. Guess I get to take my whole fricking top end apart.

Can I just change 1 lifter or should I change them all?

------------------
The IROC Homepage
<A HREF="http://www.rit.edu/~jli4307/camaro" TARGET=_blank>
View the restoration of an 85 IROC</A>
"I didn't know a bored out Ford could go so slow" -Shenandoah

 

Well, in the process of taking the top end apart, I found what I think is the problem. You can see pics here:
http://www.nethirdgen.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002738.html

------------------
The IROC Homepage
<A HREF="http://www.rit.edu/~jli4307/camaro" TARGET=_blank>
View the restoration of an 85 IROC</A>
"I didn't know a bored out Ford could go so slow" -Shenandoah

 

Looks like that was most of your problem, although you still have the problem of that dry rocker arm! That will become a problem in short order if not dealt with now (I'm sure you're planning to do so, since you have the intake off anyway!)

Good luck!

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Working on:
'84 Z28 LG4 305 with 200,000 original miles!
Added dual elec fans.
145 MPH IROC Speedo
Building 430 HP 350 (ZZ430)
using primarily GMPP parts.
Short block sitting on a stand. (Man, those Fast-Burn heads look good, (just sitting there doing nothing!LOL))

Starting to look like the Kicker poster child!

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