no oil

new to alcohol f/c racing. i am having trouble melting the pushrod to the adjuster stud ball. all new randy anderson engine. we have help from john force racing. to no gain. seems there is enough oil any help ?????

 

I presume you are running a screw wich means you would be turning pretty high rpm. Because of this criteria it sets the stage for this to happen. You may have to come up with some type of oiler like they use on the veney motors. We had this problem a long time ago with our BAE stuff and believe it or not cured the whole problem by simply squirting torco assembly lube on the adjusters and all around the pushrod cups and on the lash caps between rounds. Do it when you are setting the valves so there is no pressure on the adjuster and the lube can get down in there. That stuff works. Remember that the crank only goes round 800 times or so down the track and that torco is sticky. Some people may tell you to get some new trick of the week adjusters or something but you probably already have all that. Just get a couple of oil cans with flex nozzles and squirt it on em.

 

We were told this summer a little trick from a fellow racing team to help cure push-rod problems. They told us to take valve lapping compound and lap all the pushrods to the adjuster balls. Seemed to work really good, havent burned a pushrod since. We also use a thick moly grease when installing the pushrods, we fill the cups right up with it then set the valves and it seems to work really well.

Hope this helps.

[ November 19, 2004, 01:05 AM: Message edited by: Nathan Sitko - 625 TAD/TAFC ]

 

ooh great idea

 

The zinc additive has been removed from most oils, and is the cause of this. A pint of General Motors EOS in the oil really helps.

 

I am guessing you are running a chrysler hemi style engine which does not pump oil through the pushrods but does pump oil around one of the head studs to the rocker stands then through the shafts . With no direct oiling to the pushrod cup the tips sometimes burn up before the oil gets splashed onto them during start up . Combine the lack of oil with super high spring pressures and before you know it you have a bunch of burned up tips . Some teams lubricate the tips before start up everytime with some type of moly paste or assembly lube . If you look at other hemi engines at the track you will also see a oil line running into the back of the head that goes directly to the oiler stands to speed up the supply of oil . Stage V offers a oiling option also on their rocker arms which i think is to help this problem also .

 

Manton hocked me up. We used to loose one a run. now we have not lost one in 2 years. Make sure that when the rocker is relaxed that the oilholes line up and spray in to the cup. We also opened up the lash to let oil get between the adjuster and the cup. We still take a good look after every run and use this stuff called PEE-nut butter that I got from Aaron Sipple.We run 400LBS on the seat and 1100 open with our springs

 

thanks to all for for the info on burning pushrods. some we tried others we wii try. i did not note that it is brad anderson 520 ci motor. john meddlin from force racing is also trying to help he says the 9800 rpm shifts has alot to do with the problem. if i fix it i will post the fix.

 

ralphp,

Also one thing I forgot to mention that we did to our motors to help the pushrod problem was to take the camshaft, put it in the lathe, and open that oil grove up (the one that feeds the rockers). Do not go deeper than it comes standard, but widen it. Once we started doing this it helped a ton- more oil gets there, and it gets there faster! We now do that to all of our camshafts before running them. We also spun the pump without the valve covers on and put a restrictor in one rocker arm to even out the pressure & amount of oil per side of the motor- seemed that one side was always getting more than the other, once we did that it has been perfect.

 

Ralph
I hope the information I gave you works out for you. Actually I know it will good luck and if can help out again let me know you have my #
Gene T JR.

 

I have experienced the same as Funnycarbob, make sure that your rockers are exposing the squrter holes on your rocker shafts, we killed several p/rods. Now we run without problem @ 10,000rpm.

 

Hehe. Thing gotta Hemi in it?


never mind.

- Jay

 

After fixing the mag drive gremlin and thanks to Brian Scollon at GRP for developing a really good connecting rod, burning up the intake adjuster became the #1 problem on hemi engines.


George Santos, whose bluntness I admire, once said, "You know, machines work better if you oil 'em." Taking his advice, I developed a means of internally porting oil to the tip of the intake adjuster, where a little dab'll do ya. It presently gets sprayed all over the place, some of which might find its way to the adjuster ball tip, but most of which just contributes to filling the rocker covers with oil that really ought to be in the oil pan where the oil pump pickup is.

Wow, did it ever work! George was right again. This doesn't just move the problem back a little bit, it pushes it so far back that it ceases to exist. I developed this on Mike Johnson's alcohol dragster several years ago, and he had accumulated in excess of 250 runs on the prototype set of adjusters and pushrods before parking the car.

The fix requires a rework to the Stage V intake rocker arm, and of course, the oiling adjusters need to be used. Stage V also makes intake rocker arms with the required porting already in them.

While developing them, Mike and I found that while the oiling stopped the galling and burnup problem, the neck diameter on the 5/16 diameter ball became the next weak link. To fix it, I increased the ball size to 3/8 inch, and the thread size to 7/16-20. This still allows the ball to be withdrawn through the minor diameter of the thread in the rocker arm as is the case with whe 5/16 ball 3/8-24 threaded adjusters.

Th pushrods may be retipped with 3/8 cups, and it isn't a bad idea to do this anyway, as you'll be starting with fresh cups that will be free of galling.

It's important to make sure that they're actually getting oil. Nathan Sitko's advice is good if you have a KB or older Rodeck block, in which only the left bank is oiled through the cam bearings. This is unnecessary if you have a BAE block in which a groove is machined behind the cam bearing in the #4 cam journal. All of his forged blocks have this, and some of the cast blocks have it. This ports the oil around the outside of the cam bearing so you're not dependent on the cross section of the groove on camshaft journal, which is often too small.

Norm Drazy

 

We had the same problem after we switched to the BAE block from the TFX. We were torching pushrods and adjusters every pass. I kidnapped Brad himself at Indy last year and made him come down and look and see what i had going on. He looked my setup over and suggested I add external oil feed lines to the rocker shafts. We did this at the track pitside (they walked us through it). We also prime the rocker assembly prior to each startup manually. I remove the center rocker stand bolt and squeeze the shaft full of regular engine oil. I simply screw a rearend grease nipple on the bottle and squeeze till it runs out the rocker arms. I also fill the cups and wipe the tips with lithium grease when I assemble. Since doing all this we have had next to no failures. Hope this helps. Drew