7/18/23:

After returning home from Carlisle. I got the car all cleaned and Checked on the valve lash. It seems that I either Have a lifter / pushrod not spinning or a Rocker arm that is not oiling out at the Adjuster screw. It's possible I might have to check on these rocker arms or just swap to stock rockers. We'll see.

I took the car to a local Car cruise tonight it was part of the Pittsburgh Vintage Grandprix "race week" where they have various events and shows all around the local area.

Here are some pictures from the event.

I took the hungry kid out for dinner, while the crowds were coming in and building up.


Then we walked back to the show where she was peddling her wares to the locals.



A few interesting notes.. since this is a local show near the town where I grew up, there were some Vehicles that My dad either had owned in his "personal collection" or sold at the car lot.

This 1933 Dodge Five Window Street Rod Sat around the house or garage since 1984 or so...
New owner is enjoying it and actually using it.


We parked next to a 1968 Dodge Dart GT that was sold off dad's car lot about 25 years ago. Same Owner has had it since he bought it off my dd in the late '90's




Tomorrow I will investigate the Rocker arm issue a bit more and swap to stock rockers if needed, or check for obstructions / drill an oil squirt hole on the chunky rockers if needed.

Oh yeah, remember this idea:


IT WORKS!

I have been taking the car hard around some Right Hand turns and no gas dribbling onto the quarter panel any more, so that is good. I just have to open the trunk and the valve when fueling up, but that is not a problem.

Planning on running the PVGP Countryside Tour Thursday.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Cool pics and fun event.

Can you see which pushrod is not spinning? I hear the lifter/lobe will die quickly if no spin. Have fun on the tour today! Hope I can join next year...

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

7/21/23:

@dart270: I did not verify that they are all spinning, but I assume they are or I would have lost a lobe by now. It was lack of oil from the rocker arms. It's fixed for now.

I participated in the PVGP Coutryside Tour yesterday.
It was ~120 Miles of Heavy Flogging on Wesmoreland, Fayette and Somerset County PA Back Roads and Mountain Routes.

I was a group leader, and the fantastic volunteer organisers of the event thought that the lowly '64 Dart Grüne Hölle Edition should lead off the fastest group first at 9:00 AM.
I had 4 Cars in my Group, all capable European Grand Tourers in their own right.
In my group:
2015 Porsche 991:

1995 Porsche Porsche 995:

1990 Porsche 964:

and a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 500SL




We had a blast ripping around some mountain roads and I made some new friends from Philadelphia and Delaware, it is usually unlikely that Porsche Guys were digging the Dart but they did.
This tour gets a way different crowd than the local car show car cruise guys which is refreshing.

It's safe to say that the engine is fully operating properly and spent much of the time between the 3500-5200 RPM range. Lots of Heel toeing and bliping of the the throttle for downshifts makes me smile, puts the engine in the proper RPM range to get torque coming out of any corner. 95 Mph Maximum Speed on routes that had no freeway or highway in sight.

2 days ago, I swapped what I call the "chunky" Roller Rockers out for stock Slant 6 Rockers.
I had Ran these "chunkies" for a few years with apparently no issues, but not now.
There is a lack of oil at the Rocker adjustment Screw. It was eating up Rocker screws because they were dry. That is why my lash needed reset a few times in the last 3 weeks. The solution there is to Install a Spray Bar in the Valve cover or Modify the Rockers for Adjuster screw oiling - Which is probably what I will do.

After I Left for the Trip, I realized that the Rocker arm Swap back to stock arms was causing some interference issues with the valve cover. (the vales on this head must be a bit taller than stock. I Had a bit of a diaper on the Valve cover during the Countryside tour to catch any oil that was getting ejected out of the car during driving, and for now until I can get some time to do proper cleaning, welding and metal work on this Valve cover I have the Side of the road / parts store hack..

On the #6 where the Valve cover is slimmed down for the Heater box clearance on '60-62 Models the Rockers were knocking and wore a hole through the metal.


This is also happening on the inside too as I can feel the Rockers clicking against the steel metal baffle inside above cylinders 5 and 1/ 2 where the PCV and Oil Fill is.
Quick fix for now:



' till next time.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

11/18/24:

I have not updated the thread here, because I have not done anything of note for well over a year.

Work, vacation, and family have been demanding my time as well as my pseudo Mechanical Restoration on the 1962 Valiant Wagon from October 2023 through June 2024.

Some things that happened before the dart was parked:
Roof Rack bars installed:


Driving the Kid around for various things, Ice Cream, Girl scouts, Band, etc...



Why have I parked the most fun to drive car in the fleet for 15+ months? well let's fire up the 'ol time machine to find out..

I went on a trip in July 2023 from Irwin, PA to Greenville, Ohio towing a U haul Single axle Box trailer with the Grüne Hölle Dart.
I left here 'Round about midnight, and drove through 1.5 Hours of torrential rain around the Dayton area before getting off of I70 for the county and state routes. I arrived at my destination just about at sunrise, at 5:45 AM.

I met up with forum user dadtruck for some slanted discussions and to pick up slanted parts, as well as the 'ol Mike Jeffery Flow bench, and Mike's "Book of Secrets" as John refers to it as.
On the way home outside of Columbus, Ohio I also picked up a Complete, but disassembled Slant 6 core engine from a FABO Forum member that needed it gone.


John and I Enjoyed cruising around the back roads of Ohio, and went to a nice car cruise on Saturday about 40 miles from John's house. The cruise was at the A.B Graham Memorial Center, which is an old Miami East School District Building turned community center and museum.
The car show was nice, but I really enjoyed the museum. There were a lot of AG artifacts that I would not have known about as I was not raised working on a farm as a youngin'.






After leaving the show and returning to John's house I felt something not right with the engine.
I started to head home before sundown. I pulled over in Fletcher, Ohio, on US Route 36, pulled the valve cover and adjusted the valves again. Within 5 miles a lobe was wiped. - I nursed it back home on 5 cylinders for ~270 Miles, stopping in metro Columbus around 9PM to put more slanted parts in the trailer.
I pretty much kept it in 4th gear, No 5th gear whilst towing a big, high box full of stuff. Fortunately the interstate from Columbus to here is mostly flat so that helped.
It was slow and annoying, but I made it home to park the car in July 2023.

I will be pulling the head or the engine soon to see what happened. Possibly the valve springs have too much open pressure for this cam, I never thought to check that stuff, but I will now. I have another copy of the cam, and I will change the oil pump too, as the standard volume one is no good for this combination.
before I start all of that, I began a little bit of cosmetic (re)restoration:

Hood and Valence properly painted at the body shop:
I spray bombed them a few years ago with Rust-oleum Professional, it held up well, but I had some $ so I figured I would get it done right.



The behind the grille / headlights area was never painted correctly either. I prepped and spra bombed those sections while it was apart.







I also plan on doing some work / welding / reinforcement to the Euro License plate frame. It's all made from scrap steel, actually 1981 Chrysler LeBaron Station Wagon Roof, it needs a bit of detail work so that will get done too!




'Till Next time.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Thanks for the update Greg, curious to see what those pieces look like when You get them out of the engine...
Jim K6

12/15/24:

Last week, I Finished the painting of the trim on the front areas near the headlights between the headlight and the grille area, and got the front grille and valances reinstalled.









This week, I drained the fluids, and pulled the engine and transmission. I have a Mike Jeffery prepared racing head on this engine. It is the style without spark plug tubes, so the head needed pulled to remove the offending lifter and inspect the damaged camshaft ̶l̶o̶b̶e̶ nub. The lifter is also heavily damaged.

I hope the pull the tins today, swap the oil pump, clean up and reinstall everything.
I also would like to order different length push rods.

Here is a bit documentation:
https://youtube.com/shorts/SQg3Gcmo5Ss?feature=share

Engine Removed:


Dished Lifter

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12/28/24:

Here is a rundown of some of the work that has been accomplished:

I got the old (broken) camshaft removed. There were 2 cam bearings which were damaged as well.
Maybe it is possible that the bearing trash got in between the lifer and lobe - Could it be that caused the one lobe to fail? (The failed lobe was next to a trashed cam bearing.) the other 11 lobes were fine.
I had a partial set of cam bearings on hand so I knocked out the damaged #2 and #3 bearings and replaced them with the extra set that was lying around on the shelf. I do remember the bearings being tight from the build 2 years ago, but I did not know how to correct the condition so I let it go on the last rebuild... live and learn.

This time with the new #2 and #3 cam bearings everything spins well with or without assembly lube.
I got the new cam degreed in at 101.5° with a goal of Intake ℄ of 101°. The previous cam was installed at 0° offset to get the cam degreed in, this cam required 2° to get near 101°.





I cleaned up the tins and inside the engine a bit. Of course, there was some glitter, but nothing extreme like when a rod bearing fails.




The custom oil pan needs a bit of refreshing.


I had found a leak on the bottom of the pan 2 or 3 years back - I dabbed on some RTV sealer on the crack as a temporary fix, now it is time to fix it correctly.


If you followed the saga the entire time, you will recall that the valves in this head must be a bit taller, so when I switched back to the stock rocker arms in ~July 2023 they rubbed the valve cover on cylinder #6.


I fixed the cuts in the valve cover also with a dab or RTV, it worked well and kept the oil in.


Now it is time for a proper fix for this as well.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

12/29/24:

I completed a bunch of metalwork today.

The pan got its little repairs:


Reinstalled the metal windage screen and red loctited the small button head screws that keep it in place.
Fingers crossed as I put ~15,000 Miles on this first configuration of the pan and the screws were still tight and loctited in place when I removed them a few weeks ago for cleaning etc.


Fresh Paint looks good in pictures.


I placed some cut lines on the VC for future surgery and #6 cylinder bump.


I have probably spent 10 hours on this little part so far. It sure does not look like much, but a lot of little cuts, little hits of the MIG, grinding, finishing, and dolly work take time to complete. I want the finished product to look like it was factory-made that way.


I can soon clean up the rear main seal retainer on the engine and install the oil pan, oil pump, and distributor.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Great progress Greg!

Are you thinking some bearing material gled the lifter and kept it for turning? Seems plausible. Galling in the journal probably broke the cam too.

_________________
Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

Yes Dennis that is my guess. I have never had a problem like this before.

Greg

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

I know a guy that makes spacers?

_________________
2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

Yes so do I.

I like the challenge of making something with my hands sometimes.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/hyperpack

Yes, Me too! Plus you will have a one of a kind!

_________________
2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

Hi Greg:

I was recently taught an easy method of fixing cam bearings that are tight because the 426 Hemi I'm building had tight bearings...I don't have a picture to show of the finished unit, but think I can describe the process...

The machinist I use builds the fastest qtr mile, twin turbo, nitrous, Toyota engines anywhere. Over 240 MPH out of V6 engines. Anyway, the cam bearings were tight in the Hemi, So he ask for the old Hyd cam core(we switched to a roller), then he took a cutoff wheel and cut a groove across the cam journals at an angle to the journal, and at a slight undercut to create a cutting edge, and a slight outward taper on the other side. He did this to each journal in just a few minutes. Then he slid in the cam and used a wrench to rotate around a few times, and viola, nice free turning and the bearings looked fine afterward.

Of course, I don't think this would be wise on an assembled engine, unless you could figure a way to clear the shavings.

Here is an image I made in an attempt to describe what I mean.



Here is a quick cad drawing describing the approximate cross section to cut into the journal. These are not critical angles or depths, it's done free hand, and if you screw up, just cut a little deeper or wider until you have a fairly sharp edge on the cutting side.



Again, this does not need to be precision in any way other than achieving a sharp edge on the left(counter clockwise) side of the journal surface.

When I purchased my Pontiac SD455 back in the mid 80's, I ran it for many years after installing a new Comp cam, running mid 12.40's with 7.5:1 compression and 87 octane fuel. However, after 40k miles or so I wanted to build more power. So I built the engine(at the time myself, I had access to a friends race machine shop for personal use). Long story short, I finish laying the crank, installing #1 piston with no rings to degree the cam, then go to install my new roller cam. While sliding the cam into place, everything was normal, get to the last(front) journal, and it won't even try to go in...

I start measuring, and we find the front cam bearing bore is .014" offset. How this can happen during manufacturing I can't fathom, without seeing how the cam bores are machined and how the tools are held.

I go to the recycle bin and there are my original bearings...my buddy who owns the shop and I start looking them over, and the carving knife marks are obvious on the first bearing. The factory didn't want to junk this low volume, high value block, and just carved the bearing material away.

I've come to find out, this wasn't an uncommon practice once you look at the total volume of engine production, you will have issues here and there, and certain of them were considered repairable. If it makes it through warranty...

End of the story is I had to wait 6 months for a specialty machine shop to line bore the cam journals, and charge me too much money to not follow my instructions. What I got back is not what I wanted, but looked like it would work. 40K more miles running in the mid 11's on street tires at 118mph, it spun the front cam bearing repair at 600 miles into a road trip to Hot August Nights in Reno. I noticed the oil pressure was 15psi lower than normal, but everything seemed to be running fine. Oil smelled and looked good, oil temp and water temp were normal...I thought it was a stuck oil pump bypass checkball or something. So kept driving to Reno another 300 miles. A nice shop in town let me pull my Canton inspectable filter and take a look...



Not pretty, I knew exactly what had happened when I saw the material. The machine shop had simply machined some aluminum into a front cam bearing, then press fit it with lock tight, and peened a few locations around it. It spun, wobbled back to the first cam lobe, and then was milled away on the drive to Reno. I knew this because it was only aluminum in the filter, no magnetic material, and the engine was still running well.

As a true hot rodder, I new that in a Pontiac, the very last thing to get oiled in the engine was the front cam bearing, so I wasn't to worried about debri contamination, and I have my filter bypass capped, so never unfiltered oil. I called a buddy and warned him he might have to drive south and trailer me at a moments notice, but I drove it another 900 miles home. Pulled the engine, and other than the cam bearing and minor bearing wear from thousands of full throttle passes on the street and strip, the engine was in fantastic shape.

That same roller cam is in the destroked 455 in my car now and running in the 10's. For anyone who cares, its almost the same cam specs as the FT cam for my slant. 254/260 @ .050" 286/292 @ lash(.017") installed at 102 in the SD, but 106 in the 446" because it's 11.2:1 compression.

Didn't mean to hi-jack the thread, but thought you and others might find this a good work around for cam bearings when building a motor.

I've been following your progress for years, and have torn down my 64 Valiant to follow almost the same track you have...especially like the trunk battery box. Putting the 5spd and new motor with external oil pump into the car this spring.

I've been preparing pictures for posting about my build soon.

Gearhead
AKA Karl

_________________
64 GTO...10.80's@122 on street radials
Destroked 455, Qjet, stock ign, 2400 stall

64 Valiant
Old 225, 4spd, 2.92-8.75, 2bbl, headers
dual 2.25"

Hi again Greg:

This comment is because your musings on this thread remind me of the many wonderful years I did what most people can't or won't. But you still seem to try and do...

I just wanted to say, maybe pat myself on the back because of the modern desire to never have to deal with adversity, and people always acting weird about driving the old cars they own. My buddies and I used to drive from Portland to Seattle, Canada, Idaho, California...anywhere racing paid money to win. Share motel rooms and pool money when needed. Long before cell phones and instant problem solving or next day deliveries.

We pulled the slicks from our trunks, raced 2-3 or 4 days depending on the event, then drove home. I can't remember any of us having to trailer home, although there were a couple of sketchy long drives with broken spider gears, or transmission issues, once even a bad rod bearing(local track,PIR), but made it home.

To me, the whole point is to drive and enjoy the cars I love, every minute in a modern climate controlled anything makes me annoyed. I'd rather drive my Valiant or GTO anywhere than let my friends drive me around in their modern plastic. Life is short, as I'm increasingly noticing at 61 yrs old, and I want to spend as much of it as possible playing with my toys and cars and not work and bullcrap.

I understand in the modern world these goals are difficult, as your car has been out of commission as mine have, time flies, then you haven't lived the life you wanted because...obligations/time...ugh.

Anyway, watching your build, reading of your adventures, has helped keep me somewhat on target to finish my builds as well. I keep wanting to work on my cars, but we just had to remove the 7th dangerous tree from our property, just like that, 4 days of chainsaws and debri clearing...no work on the cars.

Gearhead
AKA Karl

_________________
64 GTO...10.80's@122 on street radials
Destroked 455, Qjet, stock ign, 2400 stall

64 Valiant
Old 225, 4spd, 2.92-8.75, 2bbl, headers
dual 2.25"