Hey y'all. Still having oil control problems in my new 428. Here's a rundown for those who haven't heard my moaning.

Got new 428 built. Specs:

-428 "C" block, bored to 4.155" with torque plates. Block half-filled with Hard-Blok. Main studs. Studs on cylinder heads.

-J&E pistons. 10.5:1

-CJ rods with ARP bolts.

-428 crank 0.010/0.010"

-rotating assembly balanced

-Comp Cams solid flat tappet cam with 270/276 degrees @ 0.20", 240/246 @ 0.050", .598/.608" lift, 108 lobe separation angle, 104 intake centerline
Using Crower "cool face" dumbbell solid lifters. oil passages to lifters not plugged.

-Ported Ebok #6005 CJ heads with 2.09/1.66" Ferrea valves. Flows 303/206 cfm @0.600".

-Ported Blue Thunder single 4 bbl intake. Using custom cut rubber intake gasket, not Printoseals.

-850 Holley double pumper with 76/82 jets, 3.5" power valves. 1/2" divided spacer. 4" K&N element

-2" Crites headers. 3" pipes with x-pipe, 2 chamber Flowmasters and turndowns

-7 qt. milodon oil pan with windage tray. Melling High volume oil pump. oil drain back holes massaged. oil passages at pump/filter enlarged smoothed out. Main bearing/oil passage misalignment fixed.

-Harland Sharp rocker shafts and rockers Crane 99895 valve springs (~420 lbs open). Dove rocker supports. Titanium retainers. Teflon seals.

Here's the deal. I broke the engine in in the car for about 30 minutes. It was smoking lightly. Drove to muffler shop and got headers hooked up, about 60 mile round trip. Drove it home. By now had about 100 miles and very little smoke out the tail pipes. Next morning I drove to work and it was missing pretty bad. Found the two rear plugs were badly fouled. The rest of the plugs looked okay. Checked the oil and it was over a quart down.

Did a cranking compression check. Got 185-195 on the front 6 cylinders. Got about 215 on both back cylinders. Try a leakdown test. Got 3-4% on all cylinders.

I checked the intake bolts and 3 of the rear ones were at less than 10 lb/ft of torque so I thought maybe they had backed out and the intake gasket was leaking. Took the intake off and could find no signs of oil leakage past the gasket. Intake ports look pretty clean. Took a couple of header tubes off (#4 and #1) and looked into the exhaust ports. Exhaust ports look very sooty and looks like there is oil around valve guides on interior side of cylinder head on both cylinder #4 and #1. Looks like more on #4, though.

At this point I can find nothing mechanically wrong with the motor. I am thinking maybe my valve covers are flooding and the two rear valve seals are getting submerged and leaking into the cylinders and fouling the rear plugs. Also, I cosidered that I over-filled the motor with oil. I put in 8 quarts (7 + 1 for the filter). Maybe the rear of the oil pan is getting oil up into the crankshaft above the windage tray and the crank is whipping the oil up onto the bottom of the pistons and overwhelming the rings.

So I put in some 0.090" restrictors to the rockers, re-filled the motor with a total of 6 quarts oil and reassembled it.

It fired right up with little or no smoke. I drove it about three miles easy and still little or no smoke. On the way home drove about 5 miles dipping into the throttle and letting off. By the time I got home it was smoking heavily again.

Next day drove it about 35 miles on the highway pretty easy. Very little smoke. Within about 2 miles of home I got on it hard a couple of times. When I came up to stoplights it would start smoking heavily again. Car is running fine and will fry the tires at a 35 mph roll, pulls past 6 grand easily and has no missing. Runs about 180 degrees. Has lots of oil pressure: 80 lbs at idle cold, 30 psi at idle hot. about 70 psi cruising down the highway at 3000 rpm.


Any ideas what the deal is? I don't think it's the rings still breaking in 'cause the decreased to almost nothing then it started smoking allot like something changed for the worse.

It could be valve stem seals, but it'd be weird that the back two cylinders had the seals fail at the same time.

It could be the intake gasket leaking, but again it's weird that the rear cylinders on both banks (#$ and #8) would leak at the same time. Plus I could find no signs of leakage at the gaskets. I also checked torque on the cyliner heads and none of those had backed off.

Sorry for writing a book. Any ideas are welcome. I don't want to pull the motor again, but I will if I have to.

Thanks,

Paul

Try taking the valve cover off and removing the rocker rod an bring the #4 or #8 all the way up. remove the valve spring and check the guide seal hole, from the top it should be a perfect circle and have no deformations. then try a wiggle test on the valves themselves and see what you come up with. I believe that therein lies your oil consumption.
It may not effect anything but if you do take the motor apart again check the alignment of the oil rings on those two rear pistons.

Hope that helps a little but checking the valves should lead to an answer of some form.

It's just strange that it's those two. When I tear into it again I'll check the valve guides. I hope the rings are not misaligned or broken.

If the valve guides were loose would it show on the cranking compression on those two cylinders?

Thanks for the advice,

Paul

Paul, the valve guides can be as sloppy as my sister in a frat house party and as long as the valve spring is closing it you will have all the compression that cyl will hold normally and it won't effect the blead down either. When you get into her again give me a call on my e-mail and I'll give you my number you can call or vise~versa and you can describe to me what you are seeing at that time.
Cheers,
Gary malem2us@cox.net

It does seem like the valve covers are filling and causing oil to run down the rear valve guides. Too bad they don't make plexiglass valve covers so you could just watch it.

If it's oil coming down the valve guide, how about just removing the rocker assy and installing one of several oil control types of valve seals? The heads wouldn't have to come off.

One other thing I'm wondering, is the valve cover pressurized due to incorrect PCV?? If so, any oil in the area is going to be pushed right down the valve guide.

Thats my two cents.

I defer to a higher intelligence at this time.



P

I am baffled about my oil control problems. No pun intended.

I had the same engine combo built a couple of years ago with the same oil pump, unrestricted heads, no pcv valves, etc. and it never had any smoking issues. Only differnces on the new motor are higher compression pistons, slightly different cam, and bigger headers.

The old motor had three breathers and no pcv valves just like the new one.

Funny thing is, with the new motor it seemed like it wasn't smoking and everything was fine, then pretty suddenly it started smoking. It seemed like something changed.

I may try putting on some pcv valves.

Thanks,

Paul

n/m

I have been watching this thread with as much puzzlement as Paul when he posted it. I have been looking for things in common with the 2 rear cylinders. Oil pools at the rear is a possibility but good valve seals should run submerged in oil so that is not a definative answer. The problem seems to lie with heat & load as per your 1st post. ie. when you drive it easy there is little or no smoke but when you get it on a bit the problem occurs almost immediately. The fact that the cranking compression is over 10% higher on the 2 offending cylinders suggests an excess of oil inside the cylinders. The leakdown test suggests the rings etc are ok. Very puzzling!! So I ran the problem past one of the top Aussie muscle car specialists, still no definate answer!! So back to heat & load, did you get sonic test #s for all the cylinders, could there be some bore distortion under load when it is hot?? The hardblok fill should eliminate that but if there is any weakness at the thrust faces it may show up under load. I hope that is not your problem but if everything else checks out ok something has to be causing it. Sorry for a long post with no definate answer, but I have a couple of ppl working on ideas, maybe something will come up soon.

Best of luck

David

....yes, the rear valves get heavily flooded with oil. I once cut a spare valve cover to adjust the valves of the running engine. It was about an inch high or so. I was surprised to see how fast the oil accumulated in the back area. The rear valves were flooded within seconds and there it went all past over the cover and onto the box manifold. That was even with restrictors.
I haven't had the time to solve my own smoker problem, but I've purchased stem seals that are similar to the viton rubber pos. seals that you can commonly get for the SBC.
In previous posts (many moons ago) I mentioned that I had to replace 3 or 4 teflon seals on brand new E-Bock heads. They were vertically split. I personally dislike them as they're just not flexible enough. I assume that they wear out fast leaving an oval instead of a perfect radius around the valve stem. You might give it a look to make sure they're o.K.
Bill Ballinger had made good experience w. some rubber based pos. seals. You might drop him a line.
It's really hard to tell what the reason for your problem is.
Like you I was also thinking about the splashing oil in the crank case and about those triangled oiling holes (jets) in the rods.
The SBC for instance elevates much lesser oil to the cylinder walls. It has just those tiny ears on the rods. Seems to me that it's sufficient enough to do the job.
The HP/HV oil pump thing is becoming more and more questionable to me. Considering those oil jets in the rods in conjunction with the HP/HV oil pump makes me think that this could be one of these possible reasons for those spooky oil problems. I decided to use a normal oil pump in the future. But on the other hand thousands of FE do well. So that seems not to be very helpfull too.
No doubt, your app. is a different story and a HV pump might make sense.
A situation like you're facing usually makes me fanatically investigate in all directions.
I'll try to keep an eye on this thread.
Good luck and keep us updated please.

there is a big differenc between the HP and the HV. The HV is the one you want, I understand, if you think you must deviate from the std mellings. I havent heard anything good about the HP

P

....the HP is out of discussion, but I'm not sure if the HV oil pump was / is causing me more trouble than benefits in my street engine. It is probably the cause for too much oil in the top and out of the pipes. On extended autobahn trips I'm always paranoid that it might run dry my oil pan. I don't want to generalize, just considering that it might be worth trieying out a std. mellings in my app. (near stock).
I wonder at what stage a HV becomes mandatory?

im not sure if you have your problem fixed yet if not contact me with more info. FEs forever.

I saw your thread and could not get over how frustrated I was when this happened to me on my last 428CJ. Same thing... would happen at stoplights. It would clear out if I mashed on it, next light, it started all over again once the car was warm. I tried everything that I could to resolve it on my own. 1) mill-matched my intake to my heads for a perfect seal thinking oil was seeping into my intake ports. No change. Replaced my valve stem seals with a different type. No change. Checked the drainbacks to make sure they were not blocked by a misaligned gasket or gasket sealer where the head meets the block (Check this too).

I'm not suggesting this is your problem, but I'll pass along what happened to me in a similar situation that took me a while to figure out. The answer in my particular situation was a bad one. The motor only had 3,000 miles on it from the previous owner of the car, but the bearing clearances on the rod bearings were wrong, LOOOSE! I had fair oil pressure but so much oil was getting passed the connecting rods slinging from the rotating assembly and connecting rods up into the lower half of the cylinders, and the oil rings could only fend off so much oil before it would start smoking just sitting at stoplights - once it warmed up. I could almost time it right down to 45 seconds and it would start smoking. Embarrasing to say the least. Anyhow, in my case it was the stupid rod bearing clearances and not valve stem seals or or intake gaskets or anything else I originally thought it was. What a hassle, but we finally figured it out and got it fixed. Good Luck.

If the rocker covers are flooded with oil, it will smoke no matter how good the seals are. If your cam is grooved on the #2 & #4 journals for a side oiler, you'll get too much oil to the rockers, especially with solid lifters. Make sure your rocker shafts are installed with the oil holes on the bottom

2 questions , 1 is the under intake manifold splash pan installed?, 2 at what angle does the engine sit in the vehicle?...(could it be puddling oil to the rear )
also to view the oil in the valvecovers , take an old valve cover and cut it out (away from the top of the pushrod/rocker oil hole)

I have 2 cars with similar 428s (68 Mustant and Kit Cobra) , had same problem as you , reduce restrictor size to .060 or so and switch from 20W50 to 10W30 (I use Valvoline racing oil).Oddly enough the lighter oil solved the problem ? I believe it flows better and will drain down better. Also put some miles on that car , beat it a little after you switch to the lighter weight oil and I think , based on your compression and leakdown test that this is your problem.
Has nothing to do with your problem but if running a solid cam I use Shell Lifters and block the galleys . In any case I would run Shell Lifters with or without blocked galleys , they maintain oil pressure better as they have a small metering hole.

Do you have a PCV valve hooked up to the intake manifold- and it the PCV vacuum fitting in the intake on those rear 2 cylinder runners ?

I had a motor that fouled one plug all the time- drove me nuts- fresh rebuild- it was the PCV line pulling raw oil from valve cover into the intake, and into one cylinder

moved the pcv valve from rocker cover to valley pan, fixed it

Are stuck in the 2 cylinders.

The machine shop put dowel pins in the intake to locate the intake manifold. One of the pins was too close to and intake port, #5 or #8 I can't remember now. It cracked through and allowed oil to flow into the intake port.

The pin was installed through the top of the head under the valve cover going down into the intake. That sounds really weird when I think about it. Anyway it acted like a straw allowing oil to flow directly into the intake port. As for why the cylinder on the opposite side of the engine had oil, too? I was told the two ports "communicated" with each other and one pulled from the other. That doesn't quite make sense to me.

However, when the hole was welded up and the motor put back together, no smoke! Who would've thought?

Thanks for all the replies,

Paul

....it took some time, didn't it? Time is running so fast.
Merry Christmas to you and all others.

Well, I waited for about 9 months for my friend to get his 440 Chrysler built so we could go to the engine dyno together. I gave up a few weeks ago and decided to put my motor back in the car and get it going. I fired it up today and it sounds great and doesn't smoke.

I drove it around the neighborhood to announce the 'new dog' in town.

I've been reading a lot about exhaust and decided reducing my 3.5" collector to 3" before the x-pipe is not good. So, I am going to put in a complete 3.5" system with 3.5" x-pipe and 3.5" mufflers followed by turndowns in front of the rear axle. I think if you are going to reduce the pipe diameter it is best to do it after the mufflers or at least after the x-pipe (or h-pipe). It also gives me an excuse to try bigger pipes and a different muffler. Right now I am considering the Hooker Aero Chamber or the Dynomax Magnum Race Bullets. Has Anyone tried these?

Thanks everybody for all the help the smoking problem. If you're in the Kansas City area watch out for an ugly blue Cougar. It doesn't hook up below 35 mph. Weeeeee!

Paul

Less than a week after I got the motor running and in the car I got an offer for a free day at the dyno. Local machine shop just got a new dyno and wanted to show it off to a local car club using my motor (which they built).

So, out comes the motor again. Well we started with 488 hp and after 15 runs, tuning with valve lash, jetting, ignition timing, and spacers, we ended up with 517 hp at 6200 rpm and 521 lb./ft. at 4200 rpm. I couldn't fit the mufflers on the dyno so that is with open headers. What I'm most happy about is that we gained almost 50 lb/ft. at 3000 rpm (408 to 446 lb/ft.) That should really make it fun on the street. I'll have it back in the Coug' within a month, I think.

Paul

Do you have stock cj heads on this engine? If so, what type of head gaskets and exhaust gaskets did you use and where did you fine them?

...hey man, that's unbelieveable. So you say you're gonna put it into the cougar this summer? Sounds good to me. Please post us a view pics of your power plant. And hey,..keep the wheels on the ground and watch out for the fuzz.
BTW I didn't seem to be able to post in this forum since weeks. Something w. the HTML text area didn't work out for me.
Best
Theo

We exchanged messages about our similar 428's on the other board. Haven't been able to get on to the other one. Is it down? Anyway, I'm looking for ballpark jetting for my 428. Again, what was the final jetting on your 517hp 428? Mine seems to be way fat.
432cu
10.66 cr
236/236 dur .576/.576 lift
Edelbrock RPM
Holley 800DP
Proform Main body
Mallory Unilite 37 deg total
MSD 6AL
2800 stall Fairbanks
4.11 to 1 Trac-Loc
31"x 9" Hoosier
65 Ford F100 LWB 4100# w/driver
Best 1/4 mi: 13.38 @ 102
Equates to 330-360hp. Not even remotely close to what it capable of. Rather disappointing.
Thanks for your help again.
Hal

I started at 76 primary/82 secondary. I tried jetting up and lost power. Jetting down kept gaining power. We didn't go leaner than 76/76 because of the brake specific fuel consumption figures. It looked like the motor was happy at that point. I don't remember exactly what the BSFC numbers were. I think they were in the .450 range. The motor may have gained more power with even leaner jets. I don't know.

Paul