Most any Carb can be primed well enough to get its pump working thru it's fuel bowl vent in 60 seconds! a Glass measuring cup works great.
Be sure you have FRESH gas in the tank. NOT fresh gas added to old. Stale fuel, even when blended with new fuel, will cause the valves to stick in the guides. Also, I wouldnt trust the dash gauge for an accurate oil pressure reading. I would install a gauge. Tom Mooney
Yeah, this is the second full tank of gas. I had been around town several trips and short runs on the highway of 4 mi at speed, everything was fine. Manual guage but not marked, I am not concerned with oil pressure at 3/4 scale at highway speeds, low at idle hot. Pressure comes up rapidly with just a little rpm.
Three things ,,, dont use fram filters on Buick engines.... and when you change oil , install ZDDP additive every time.... that puts the zinc back in the oil that the factories left out.... zinc is a anti-friction agent.... now old mechanics trick is to sub one qt. of automatic trans fluid for a qt. of oil at oil change....... I had the same lifter problem and that cured mine.... I have done this with several engines over the years and it worked every time.... Doc
Three things: Fram filters? what's with that? Zinc? all oils have adequate anti-friction agents...zinc or other agents. ATF in engine oil? ATF is a fluid and not designed for crankcase use. And stay away from the additive isle at the parts store!
Well,,,, just go on and do like you want to.... the oils we get today do not have the zinc anti-friction agents that the nailheads need to keep from knocking the lobes off of the cam.... so if one wants to protect the engine he needs to add ZDDP to the oil.... ATF has a lot of cleaning detergents in it... and is about 10wt... so added to 4 qts. of engine oil does not make it too thin... and cleans the crud out of the lifters... I have done that for 40+ years and it has never failed to pick up a collapsed lifter.... and Buick engines have a long history of bad experiences with fram filters.... dont take my word for it ,, check it out.... right here on this board.... I will stick by what I said....
I take the oil filter apart at first oil change on rebuilt engines and I found no issue with the construction of the Fram CH106PL used in the 55 Buick. I seldom use them since they are hard to find and most expensive. Other filters: Wix 51121 or made by Wix (NAPA 1121 or Carquest 85121); Purolator L40124; Baldwin P25. I had the heads off my 55 after 85,000 miles and the cam and lifters were fine and the cylinders still had hone marks...just common old Castrol GTX which is low to moderate zinc. You might get different results with the bigger nailheads, especially if rebuilt with high lift cam and/or stiffer valve springs.
I totally agree that casterol oil is good stuff,,, I used it for many years.... but when all the factorys went to roller cams in their engines, the oil companies cut the zinc level in the oils for epa regs.... so,,, if one wants to have that extra edge, he puts in the zinc additive.... especially for flat tappet engines.... back when I was going thru Ford mechanics school , all the factories specified that you put a engine together super clean, put in the fluids,,, rotate the engine with the spark plugs out untill the oil pressure comes up and then install the plugs , and fire it up and let it idle until it warms completely up... 20 minutes or more... then set the point dwell , timing, and carb idle adjustments.... there was none of that ''rev it up to 2500 rpm'' stuff.... we never ever lost a cam.... what is different,,, not the metals... has to be the second grade oil.... just like the cat pee gas we get now days... we would coat a cam and the lifter feet with moly grease for break in.... and that is all.... I prefer a full flow filter if I can get it.... usually motorcraft.... never had a issue,,, also used motorcraft spark plugs, because in our mechanics school tests they fired at 20 lb more pressure than all others.. We spent a week of study about atf and learned all the aspects... the trans operates at just as high temps as the engine.. and there is very little sludge after 100,000 miles... and it conditions the seals... we used trans fluid for many different things,,, power steering, upper cyl lube,,, I have unstuck a lot of valves by reving the engine to a high idle and pouring atf into the carb... i say that marvel mystery oil is nothing but atf put into a different can... I love the nailheads and have a 64 riv that i show and a 65 skylark GS that i am currently slowly working on....
When I "woke" the SportWagon's 400 back up from its 27 year nap with only 29,xxx miles on it .. it had one noisy lifter. I spoke with Jim Weise about it and he recommended changing the oil but putting one quart of ATF in and then the oil until full .. run it for 500 miles or until the noise goes away and then another 100 miles .. Sure enough, within 100 miles of oil/atf change it went silent .. drove another 100 miles and changed back to straight oil WITH ZDDP. .. that was 11,000 quiet noise-free-lifter's ago. Still going strong and quiet YMMV
Well, the tranny fluid IS cheaper than Risolone... Are there any examples of oil related cam/lifter failures on a stock nailhead? On a stock nailhead with original parts?
The early "Nails" had steel cams that had a tendency to wear a hole in the bottom of the lifters, but the can normally servived.
yep,,,, the ATF trick is an old mechanics trick that I learned back in the early 60's and it really does work.... but I usually just leave it in untill the next oil/filter change... it has never failed me....
Update: Not definitive yet. I determined that I indeed have '55 lifters and pushrods in my engine. I replaced both lifters in #6 cylinder.I used VL-2 lifters which have a shorter overall dimension but the cup depth is shallower which maintains the effective overall length. I was going to test drive on highway, made a 10 mi trip but traffic was slow both ways so it was not a good test. No noise yet but not convinced until I get some open highway miles on it. Will post again after I get a good test run.
