After finding sloppy machine shop work, I'm worried about everything they did to my 215 motor. Looking at the installed cam bearings, I see 2 oil openings in the bearings; BUT, only one oil hole in each bearing is aligned with an oil feed port in the block. Is there 1 or 2 oil feed holes to each cam journal??? Obviously, if the block is drilled for only 1 oil port, then we are okay. The motor discussed here is an Olds version of the 215 with a Rover 4.6 crankshaft reground to 3.4 inch stroke and the main journals turned down to fit the smaller early 215. Displacement is 266 c.i.. This is less trouble than modifying a 300 buick crank because the Rover crank is the same length as the original. If anyone is interested, I will supply all the particulars.
Your are fine as there is only one Cam bearing oil feed passage coming up from each main bearing thru the main web bulk head.
Be sure to use the double groove insert for the front bearing. Also, some builders will drill an extra oil feed hole between the mains and cam bearings... well I've forgotten the details now even though I did this on my 340. Someone here may have the details. Supposed to improve bearing life and possibly reduce oil loss. Jim
Thanks, this is the explanation that I was hoping for. Now for the next problem; curing the leaking rear main seal. Out with the rope and in with the 2 piece neoprene seal. As advised, am installing the seal halves with appropriately .010 inches protruding above the block and cap surface for slight preload.
Thanks for the info. This motor worries me with potential oiling problems. The original 90,000 mi. motor had the first 6 cam lobes totally wiped. 500 miles into the rebuilt motor and the last lobe (#16) on the new cam was damaged. Yes I used cam installation lube and pre-pressure oiled it. This new cam got Crowers specially modified lifters that bleed oil back to the lobes. I'm also using extra zinc phosphate. We will see!
On the 350 we stagger the joints of the seal so about 1/4 inch away from the junction of the cap and block...
D & D sells this 2 piece seal which is for a 170/200 early Ford 6 cylinder so its not precisely the correct size but close. Each half of the seal must be trimmed about 1/4 inch.
Ok cool. Still a good idea to ofset the place they meet with the cap surface to reduce the chances of it leaking at the location the cap meets the block.
Read your discussion on the British V8 site (2016) re low oil pressure. My aluminum Olds stroker motor has .0025 main clearance, too loose, which may account for the 25-30 psi on 40 wt hot oil even with the high volume oil pump modification. HOWEVER, I removed the intake manifold to check for excessive oil flow volume with the new Crower "cam saver" lifters. Whatever slight increase these lifters may supply to the cam lobe was nothing compared to the volume of oil gushing from the center hole in some of the lifter tops. Some, but not all, of the lifters flowed significantly lesser volumes of oil. In your opinion, is there any significance in this information??
IIRC the 215 stuff had solid pushrods and oiled through a passage through the block. The lifters for the solid pushrods should only have a very small or no hole at all on the top of the lifter, can't remember but I know that regular lifters shouldn't be used. If you have your old lifters the cup portion might fit in your new "cam saver" lifters. This may be where you are loosing oil pressure at? GL
I was aware of the solid push rods and that there was no apparent need for this much oil flow since the rockers were not being oiled thru the push rods, so we are on the same page with this. I do not have the original lifters so who knows how much oil they passed. One thing that gets my attention is that some lifters flow moderately and some flow maybe 2-3 times as much. there is definitely enough flow to affect the pressure. About that 65 Impala getting 24 mpg highway, is that fuel injected or carb??? Very impressive!!
That is carbureted with overdrive and the converter locked pussyfooting it on the freeway cruising along at 65 on relatively flat road. The roller cam is what makes that happen, its a very mild grind, .550" intake lift, .546" exhaust lift with 202* in and 212* ex. dur. @ .050" on a 113 LSA. It works great with the 307:1 gear when its in O/D, still plenty of torque to keep that barge moving. The extra cubes from it being a stroker build helps with the low end torque as well. In a lighter car less gear could be used for even better results on the freeway but at the cost of not being able to shift into O/D until after 45 mph. Power comes on right after idle so cruising down the highway it doesn't care how low the rpm are as long as they are above 1,000. The engine parts are mismatched just right to run the way I wanted it to. I do believe that TA sells the lifters for the solid pushrod engines which would include ALL sbb engines from 215 all the way up to the '68 and '69 sbb 350s so the correct lifters are still available. IIRC 1970 was the year they started oiling through the pushrods for the last sbb engine.
Obviously anything you can do within reason to reduce oil loss and increase oil supply will help. My current engine (340) rarely drops below 60psi using the stock pump. Normally the lifters aren't much of a concern but yours could be an exception. However, try to avoid swapping lifters as that can lead to cam failure. Two possible remedies come to mind, well three actually. Block the oil flow with the pushrods or rockers Swap in undrilled lifter tops if you have the old ones Convert to pushrod oiling All three options are feasible. But before worrying too much about the top end I'd want to be sure the bottom end is tight. No more than 0.0015 in the bearings, enlarged and ported passages, and a nice tight oil pump. I've found "fancy" lifters to generally not be a great idea with these engines and often lead to a noisy valvetrain but I haven't tried everything out there. Jim
I just spoke with TA's tech person. She says that lifters without oil holes have not been produced for years and that all early ssb motors are now using the lifter with oil holes for pushrod oil; and that this does not create oil pressure problems. She suggest that the timing cover side clearance greater than .003 in. is the culprit. I measured the gear to housing clearance at .004. Thanks for the detailed reply. I have often modified motors to give better power and better gas mileage at the same time. Got started on that in the 1970's when gas mileage was 12 mpg for a small block 2 barrel Monte Carlo or 10 mpg on my sisters 1974 Buick 455 c.i.. So called "gas mileage cams" were a joke. Where did you get such a high lift short duration cam?? My current project/problem car is a fairly rare 61 F85 Cutlass (first time the Cutlass name was used), so unique that MAV TV did an interview with me at a GOOD GUYS meet. This baby Olds weighs 2780 lbs. The motor is stroked from 2.80 to 3.40 and after cutting out the tunnel from engine bay to the rear axle, it now has a 700R4 and a one piece drive shaft replacing the worst ever automatic trans, the RotoHydramatic (aka the SlimJim) and the 2-piece 2-inch diameter driveshaft.
I'm showing .004 in. side clearance between the gears and the aluminum housing. as a test, I did loosen the rocker shaft and place a double thickness of masking tape under each of the pushrods on one side to stop the oil flow from those 8 lifters, then ran the oil pump using an electric drill. The results; no increase in oil pressure. I also found oil flow between the lifter and the lifter bore around several lifters My current thinking is that I have several small problems adding up to 25 lbs of pressure loss.
As much as anything, oil pump end play is pretty critical. I assemble it dry and reduce the end clearance until the gears just start to drag on the end plate. Sometimes you can square up the end a bit at the same time. That light drag will wear in quickly and engine heat makes more clearance. The suction galley is another critical part but my impression is that you've already addressed all these bits. The system flows a LOT of oil. That much loss should be a leak you can find. You could try it with the bypass blocked, if you can rig an external supply you might even test it with the pan removed. Jim
Saw the oil pressure discussion with jaygerding on another forum. Has he solved the low oil pressure problem?? I will have a local shop grind a step bit so I can bore that 7/16 oil inlet passage. Scary business this drilling of so long a passage. Will 17/32" (.531) be adequate?? This is approx. a 50% increase in cross sectional area.
That would be more than enough, usually the hole is only increased to 1/2", but the more you can drill it without breaking through the sides of the casting the merrier! If you do break through you can sleeve it with brass tubing, you may need a different size drilled hole though so the tubing sizes that is made will fit? Knock on wood, I have never had to do this but I only drill the long hole to 1/2". GL
I would go to 5/8" personally. The V6 pickup from TA uses a 5/8" tube so that would match. The aluminum blocks have more metal there than the iron ones do. With a piloted drill you are pretty safe against breaking through, and if you did it could be heliarced. I drilled my 340 block out to 9/16" and that has worked out well, so you could get by with that but I don't see any reason not to go full sized if you're going to the trouble of having the bit made. I had enough metal in my iron block to do it, but I made up the 9/16" bit and then would have had to make up another to go to 5/8" so I didn't. Jim
Its actually an off the shelf Comp Cams XFI grind, still works great even with a carb! This is the cam I have; https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cca-12-464-8/overview/ This cam calls for 1.6:1 rockers to get the lift it has. I got away without having to use a small base circle cam because I used 5.7" rods and it helped that the cam called for the 1.6:1 rockers because there is less lobe lift so no rod to cam interference. When I change the springs I want to try some 1.7:1 roller rockers(might as well, the new springs I have are good to .600" lift) with this cam if the new springs don't get me in the 12s if I can ever get back to working on my cars! With even more lift the engine should be a little bit more efficient and possibly get a bit better mpg? Instead of using more duration to keep the valve opened longer with the trade off of less low end torque, I like to open the valve higher to get the port past its max flow lift so the valve hits that point twice. Just because the valve went past the point where max flow is doesn't mean that flow stops, it just doesn't flow anymore than max but still flows close to max. The farther past max flow the valve can open the faster it will be in the max flow lift range filling the cylinder with more air and fuel. This means with less throttle angle the engine will make more power in the cam's low RPM power band because of the lower duration it has. That makes it able to cruise on the freeway at a lower RPM without lugging the engine down in o/d.(that's how I see it anyway, seems to work pretty good even if I am wrong how I explained it?)
