Having trouble with my new 355, '87 350 roller block '880' casting. Blew a head gasket and discovered the bottom end was fairly trashed and ended up doing a full rebuild. Got it all together and running, but I'm having a ton of trouble with the top end.

Had my dad help me set the valve lash, and I was getting some serious noise from #2 exhaust. I thought that was rather odd as the top end was fine when I tore it down. Had some other experienced people take a look at it and eventually came to the conclusion I had a collapsed lifter, as it was tightened down way farther than any of the others and still making a racket. So I install a set of new ls7 lifters and I'm still having the issue, but now #2 intake is doing it too. Looked at the cam while the top end was off and the lobes look fine, the old lifters look/feel fine too.

I am having some weirdness with the top end oiling however. On the stock lifters I was getting the correct amount of oil through the pushrods, with the exception of one of them on #6 which was shooting a huge geyser of oil everywhere even at like 500rpm. With the new ls7 lifters, I'm getting barely any oil at the top end until 1500rpm or so. During all this I did find out that the PO installed a high pressure oil pump at some point in time, which I reused during my build. High pressure like 70psi at 800rpm on a mechanical gauge hooked up where the oil pressure sender goes. I'm starting to wonder if that could be a factor, however my top end worked perfectly before the rebuild.

Totally stumped here, I've now got 2-3 hours of runtime on my brand new un-broken in motor just trying to get the top end in order. Any input would be much appreciated.

 

Well written. Oil pressure is primarily generated from the main bearings first and then the rod bearings. The first question I have came to mind is we need more details about your having to go for a full rebuild. What was done??.
Lifters that collapsed or new lifters that haven't been allowed to be pumped up with oil yet??.

 

Possible bent pushrods new cam not enough valve travel?

 

Well I tore the top end down to do head gaskets back in july, and figured I'm 95% of the way to getting the block out of the car so I might as well pull it and make sure everything is in proper working order. Good thing I did as #4 had a broken piston skirt, #6 had broken rings, the crank was all scratched up, and the block needed to be taken 0.030" over. Explained my oil consumption and general 'running like crap' problem.

Had the block tanked and bored 0.030" over, had the stock crank polished and reused, replaced all bearings, and obviously got new pistons. Heads could probably go for a valve job, but they're 191 swirl port castings so that's not happening. If I have to pull them again I'll just pickup a set of used 083s. Valve seals were toast and got replaced. Reused all the valvetrain hardware. Also replaced plugs, wires, cap, and rotor.

As for the lifter being collapsed, I'm not sure that's the case now, it was really just our best guess at the time based on the evidence. I checked out the lifter after pulling it out and didn't notice anything obviously wrong and it still rolled smoothly. I oiled up the new lifters before installing them, so I don't know why I'm suddenly not getting very much oil up top.

I checked out all the pushrods, thankfully none are bent. I installed them into different positions than I took them out of when I swapped the lifters just in case there was some weird problem I coudln't see, changed nothing. I'm also running the same cam as before the rebuild, which is a fairly mild SLP 51002.

I'm really confused here, as the top end was working perfectly before the rebuild.

 

Was the block checked to see if it needed to be line bored/honed??.

If any one of these passages are blocked from floating crap still in there it would prevent oil to the overhead:





Honestly I am hoping it is just a matter of lifters not pumped up fully. Loosen them all,run it, and let the oil flow freely to the top end.

 

Block was checked, and my machine shop didn't have any suggestions beyond doing another tear down and going through the block again.

As for the lifters, I had a really hard time getting the motor to run with the ls7 lifters. Installed them and set the valve lash to 1/2 turn past snug at tdc just like on the initial assembly with the stock pieces. Could not get it to start at all, fouled the plugs twice in the process. Tried loosening them, tightening them, nothing helped. Everyone I spoke to said loose rockers wouldn't stop a motor from starting, and it started up first try with the same procedure on the stock lifters.

It didn't even want to try to start, was only getting a ton of hollow 'popping' from the intake(not backfiring out the intake, just a hollow metal popping sound). Eventually at someones advice, I adjusted the rockers down an additional 3 or so turns and that was enough to get it to start. Dialed them in with a stethoscope from there, but I'm still getting noise from #2. While I was out, my dad attempted to adjust #2 intake down till the noise stopped and I'm assuming smacked the piston as it put a nice 30* bend in my pushrod and knocked the rocker off the spring. Hooked the compressor up to the cylinder and pulled the spring and the valve still seals so its thankfully not bent. All the other rockers are properly adjusted and quiet.

So even with my new lifters I'm having the exact same problem.

 

Leak it down next.

 

Alright here we go, 5 year thread bump. Probably a bit long-winded, but it was 5 years in the making, and that's my excuse

Problem the first, when I changed out the lifters, I threw on a crappy o'reilly's parts house brand timing set while I was in there, as I figured it couldn't hurt to make sure I've got a fresh chain, right? Here we go... TDC on number 1, compression stroke, line up the dots, literally impossible to mess up? Surprise! That isn't 0* cam phase on this piece of junk. What is IS, is bending all your valves and ruining your heads, and creating the "popping" sound I was hearing and general unwillingness to start(though they were swirl port heads, so some folks may make the argument that this improves their qualities as boat anchors, since now they aren't any good for using on an engine, so this might actually have made them better, unfortunately the man at the metal recycling place didn't share my point of view, and I only got standard fare for iron...). This thing has symbols on it at pretty much every possible angle and orientation, with no instructions/manual/star chart to be found in, on, or around the packaging. Postmortem, according to the machine shop, apparently I wanted the lower case 'r' for zero phase I believe is what he said, from memory. You know, as opposed to the universal standard, since forever, of "line up the dots, its impossible to screw up so long as you aren't blind." Honestly a blind person probably could put on a timing set properly by braille now that I stop to really think about it. But no, with this timing set you get two shiny new boat anchors instead if you line up the dots. Still sour about that. At least my machinist put it back together for me after diagnosing the "carcass" and confirmed that no, I'm not insane, and dot-to-dot really is out of phase with this set, and guaranteed he put it all back together at 0* for me when I came and got it...

Problem the second, dads 'old mechanics trick' of insisting on using 3m spray on trim adhesive on both sides of literally every surface on the motor that takes a gasket may in fact help stop leaks, but when you have to break out the abrasive wheel on the air grinder just to get the old gaskets off, every single time you pull the lower intake because something isn't working right, you may wind up with bits of junk in your oil galleries, no matter how much newspaper and masking tape you apply, surprising how that works out. Postmortem yet again: there was junk all through the oil galleries, though due to the third and final problem, we will never know if that was truly the culprit here, not that it matters on account of crashing the valves...

Problem the third, and one I finally discovered last week, is those cheap small block pre-oilers you get off summit(black anodized shaft, blue anodized collars, depth stop that isn't actually a depth stop as it isn't mechanically attached to the shaft in any way and just slides up and down freely, you know the ones) are 70 thou under spec in the distributor hole at the bottom of the valley when you actually stop and go mic the thing when your machinist takes a wild guess over the phone and ends up nailing the problem dead on. You know, the hole where all of the oil for the passenger side lifter gallery comes from as it passes around the distributor shaft. Pull the front-most lifter on each side of the motor, only one at a time obviously, gives me a veritable geyser of oil on the drivers side, yet not even a dribble on the passenger side; zero oil. It's because its all blowing out the past the collar on the tool, back down into the pan, making it look like I wasn't getting any oil, because the tolerances on this garbage are fully on the level of "hotdog down a hallway." Though in all fairness to full disclosure, with the amount of gasket material and crap the machine shop claimed to pull out of the oil system, its very possible that I wasn't getting any oil to the lifters on that side due to some kind of blockage. Getting ahead of myself in terms of the order things happened, but I ran it back to the shop just last week, so I could be absolutely sure the oil galleries were free and clear, as I was sitting there doing a pre-lube with my, unbeknownst to me at the time, useless pre-oiler, and still not seeing any flow on the passenger side. So he says I can borrow his "correct" pre-oiler made from an old distributor, and sure enough if you pulled any of the lifters and looked down the pushrod hole with the manifold on(to set the pre-oiler at the correct depth), there was plenty of oil to be found on every single one. Mystery solved.

So, 5 years ago where we left this thread, I finally gave up and yanked it as it wouldn't run worth a damn, was making absolutely awful noises that no one could explain, and missing oil in important places. I took it back to the machine shop and dropped it off, hoping to see if he could make heads or tails of it(which ended up costing me something like $300 for that knowledge). That's when he found tons of intake manifold gasket bits all through the oiling system, giving me a feasible explanation for my mysterious oiling woes. Also my cam was out of phase, all my valves were bent, my new pistons were marred, and the head's were to the point of "you need new heads." The best part is, not only was my cam out of phase, but it wasn't out of phase enough to deadlock the motor when you hit it with a breaker bar, which would have thrown up some very obvious red flags during assembly and prevented this entire fiasco. No, it was out of phase just enough to smack the valves into the pistons, and the compression of the hydraulic pistons+springs inside the lifters had enough travel to absorb the piston on valve contact and thus allow the motor to still roll over by hand without stoppage. There's my mysterious "popping" sound, the sound of valves bending. And of course, just last week I finally got the mystery of the passenger side lifter oiling solved, at least so far as to know there wasn't really a problem, my tool is just a cheap piece of junk and totally useless for its intended purpose...

At this point I was pretty much out of money, out of motivation, and so the car sat rotting under a leaky car cover in my driveway for 5 years, and my short block sat wrapped up in cyran wrap out in the shed waiting for me to feel like looking at the car again without the urge to roll it off a cliff and cut my losses. Remember at this point I was still harboring the notion of going LSX with the car down the line, and just wanted it running and driving so I had reliable transportation while I saved up for that. Sure I wanted it to make some power in the meantime, as my 301 2nd gen with 1000lbs on it and 50 less cubes would smoke that 350 in the sorry state it was in before I tried to rebuild it(I recall somewhere on here a fellow calling swirl port headed TPI a frankenstein motor, they weren't wrong, p/o was a definite a-hole and knew he was unloading a lemon, and I was too inexperienced to see what I was walking into for $3,200 before taxes, "built 350" ). Literally throwing away thousands of dollars for an end result of having the car be less functional than it was when I started out was kind of demotivating... Sadly all the body seals have now rotted out, the window sweeps have rotted off or been reclaimed by nature in the form of moss, the original rubber wing has shrunk and warped to the point of being unusable(I think hawk's still makes a fiberglass repop, if I'm lucky), and its mounting clips rotted off(p/o appears to have had them held together by jb weld which was not helping the situation), the trunk resembles a lake, and the interior has been fully consumed by mold, even the steering wheel is gross and fuzzy, seats are fully destroyed as well. So I've got my work cut out for me beyond just getting a working powerplant... Kind of compounding one demotivating thing with another... many demotivating things. Oh, and the paint shrunk on the hood and its cracking now. Sadly I don't see a "please shoot me" emote, or I'd use that here; I feel like I need a hazmat suit to go anywhere near the inside of the car for more than about 5 seconds.

So I switched gears to a different project car. Spent the time the past 5 years working on my 2nd gen, transforming it from "beater" status, to a much more presentable driver. Fixed all the body damage, brand new paint job, decals, the works... Tossed the 301 that sounded like a diesel when it was cold for a craigslist 403 that I got working with new cam and lifter set, and new bearings for the top end. Got the qjet rebuilt and running right, rebuilt the trans, got a pristine factory posi rear with 3 series carrier from some clueless guy who insisted it came out of a 4th gen(with leaf springs and drum brakes no less) and couldn't understand why no one wanted to buy it, so I got it for a song after he gave me the measurements and I went out to my car with a tape measure, then told him I was heading over right now with a truck and money... I was just about ready to start putting the interior back in and polish it all off, when my motor "upgraded" itself with 2 gallons of water through the oil, as those stupid rubber strips you're supposed to seal the intake to the valley pan with, but always blow out, blew out. And of course the brand new shaker scoop weatherstrip I bought of Ames for a not-inconsequential amount of money doesn't seal. So I was greeted to chocolate milkshake all through the driveway before I even made it to the street as the motor puked its guts out through every possible orifice it could. Cleaned it all out with tranny fluid in an attempt to save the motor, but the damage was done; 4psi oil cold, 0psi hot(and I know that gauge works). So pretty much every single one of those bearings is gone. I thought about replacing the 10w30 with 100wt gear oil and a tube of cam assembly lube to give me some zinc, but its really just postponing the inevitable; part of the rotating assembly will eventually decide to leave the block, or the cam will eat itself first, ultimately its already dead, I cant even be sure if its worth it as a core, when you factor in what those motors sell for compared to how much machine work this is liable to require now. It would probably be a safe gamble just buying a whole new motor to use as a core and banking on it needing less work. At least it hasn't started knocking yet, so I took it to a garage while it still moves under its own power so it wont have to suffer the same fate as my 3rd gen did thanks to our lovely pacific northwest weather, which might as well be parking your car at the bottom of a lake, cause if its not raining at any given moment, hell must have froze over when I wasn't looking. Freshly restored, freshly into cold storage, rebuilding oldsmobiles's is even more expensive than pontiac's... and no, I'm not just gonna put the chevy in it. It will probably end up with another $350 craigslist special "ran when I pulled it out of a station wagon 10 years ago" oldsmobile in the short term, since I took the time to buy all the correct accessory brackets and the air cleaner stuff for the hood scoop(which cost more than the motor, go figure). I can look at building something proper for it down the line, once its at least drivable again.

So that's my rant on what happened with this build. Maybe there might be someone else out there with a similar problem that can benefit from this knowledge some day. At the very least it gives some degree of closure to this thread. I did end up buying new heads for the chevy and had the block cleaned again, and it is going back in the 3rd gen, but everything going on with that is a story for a new thread. Though I will say I've moved on from the notion of going LSX and decided to settle on going with a mild build on the small block for now, and afterwards once I can save up enough money to cover the speed parts I'd want to buy for it(and I get a new engine for the 2nd gen, finish this engine for the 3rd gen, undo the damage from the neglect, etc), I'm strongly considering selling both cars and buying a TTA, and throwing 10 grand or so in parts at it and make it a hot daily driver(I can still always go back to keeping this 3rd gen and going LSX with that amount of money, easily, as a backup plan if it came down to that). I'll close this one off with a cool picture of my 2nd gen I took right after I got the decals put on, since it still looks damn good, working motor or not(and you can totally see like a quarter of the back half of my 3rd gen in the background behind it, so its not technically off topic!).

 

Damn, now I'm depressed and going to go take a nap. Keep your chin up brother, you are bound to hit one over the fence sooner or later.