In this picture you will see a valve cover, with a hole in it. It was punched in there by the rocker arm.

I replaced it with a spare cover. I will check it again in a few days to see if it happens again.

Soooooo...... um... what should I do?

Click to view attachment

Weld it up and now ya have a spare....

Haha.

A spring may be wearing out. How high do you typically rev?

What exactly made the hole? The adjustment nut on the rocker? If so, maybe the adjustment screw backed out, or your pushrod is bent.

Don't worry.
Nothing will happen until you start the car.

The car actually seems to be running ok.

I took off that valve cover because oil was leaking. I didn't know about the hole. When I did, I saw that the gasket was not right. The cover was definitely not seated properly.

I put in a new cover and a new gasket and will watch it closely.

What would cause this?

When you replaced the cover, did you also check valve gap?
Was it correct?

Do you have stems on there that are really long? What cylinder was it? 3?

Zach

Well. If a spring is weak, or broken, or about to break, it can let the valve assembly float much higher than normal. Under a fast rev, you can sling the rocker into something, or throw a pushrod, or drop the valve, or whatever.

The big thing is that it may be able to continue idling without too much trouble.

I would pull the rocker assembly out of that head, and check that spring.

Engine was warm, so I didn't check the valves. That's a weekend job.

It was #1.

It was the pushrod side of the rocker arm that broke through, not the valve side.

How do I check the spring? Other than the obvious to see if its broken.

Why would the valve side punch through? Less spring pressure would mean that the valve would move farther inward. There's still a cam in the way to keep the valve side from moving.

Checking it is harder to do. I have a tool for compressing the spring with the heads on, so that I can remove a spring individually. (Just be carefull not to let the valve fall into the chamber.) You would have to make this tool, as I use mine fairly often. Meanwhile, if you are a very good judge, you can tap it with a hammer, and compare it with another. Care is key. Whatever you do, you also need to make sure that the piston is definitely out of the way before you start. Otherwise, you might tap the valve with a hammer, and run it into the piston dome, damaging them both.

Care to explain that? How does a weak spring affect the length of the valve or the pushrod? The Cap'n

No, it cant. Valve longitudinal travel is determined by things: valve length and coil bind. It can't go any farther out than the length of the valve, stopped by the seat.

The Cap'n

so is the geometry off then? push rods too long?

The OP said that the cover was not seated correctly, and that the gasket was also not in there correctly. Could be the gasket being out of place, and the cover being out of place, put the cover close enough to the head in that one spot for the rocker to contact it.

Was it the #1 exhaust rocker that hit? That's on the end of the rocker box...

--DD

It's not valve distance at all. It's the rocker side that's being allowed to lift further.

Care to see the valvetrain that makes a 356 rev to 9000? I've seen this happen a few times. The spring weakens, the lifter, and pushrod are allowed to float away from the cam and the lifter can pound the valve cover. This isn't because the valve stem is longer, it's because the momentum of the assembly is allowed to further compress the weak spring. Kapt's valve cover was damaged by the pushrod side of the lifter, which further supports this. Even if this isn't the case, it'll only take an hour to check. And if there was a loose anything, as opposed to being a spring problem, he'll notice it in the disassembly phase.

I suppose that if a valve spring were to break it might allow the pushrod to fall out of the cups and perhaps temporarily to be longer than it is supposed to be. That is why you have to be sure the pushrod is properly seated after reinstalling. However this is only a wild guess.

I believe it is #1 exhaust.

I also just took a closer look at the cover. A few things to note:

1) All 4 rockers look to have hit the cover, not just #1 exhaust. The have not hit as hard as #1 exhaust. So It may have been the result of an improperly seated cover.
2) From the outside of the cover, it looks like the valve cover was dented inward near #1 exhaust, which makes it that much shallower compared to the others. Something definitely whacked the cover.

I plan to watch it for a few days and see what happens.

FYI: This is a 1911 motor with an unknown aftermarket cam. I don't know what the lift is on the cam.

Still looking for some advice.

Wear clean underwear when you go out.........

i know i owe you that candy but that's not exactly what i was looking for.

Just hoping for some more input on this.

Thanks!

Sooo.... No one wants to touch this one huh?

Are you using 911 adjusters?
If so the top of the adjusters will need to be trimmed
and a new slot cut for the screwdriver.

Craig,

I have a swivel foot adjuster, but I don't think they are 911s. Aaron saw them and said that they were something else (i forget now, but was more mundane, like Ford or Mazda something).

I checked the adjusters, and they still seem ok too.

I think that the damage was really done on the push rod side of the rocker.

That, plus the dent in the rocker cover I think made this worse.

My main worry is that the push rods are too long or there is something else with the geometry that I am missing.

joe how long is the pushrod?

Dunno

It's in the motor and I didn't build it. I resealed it and I should have measured.