After much fanfare and wrenching, the "Alien" and the "Little Bastard" are en route for a trouble free road trip to Huntsville. After Rick finally got his leaks figured out, he wasted no time breaking a CV But Chappy pitched in with a nice replacement and Rick's good to go. Of course Rick's new engine has only 15 miles on it and break in oil, we'll take a few exit ramps and such. We just had wonderful authentic Thai food prepared by my wife and we are on our way south! weeeeeeeeee!

Keep em between the lines, and we'll see ya there.

Good luck guys.

Lets see the way you drive, i figure it should take you about an hour and a half to get down there.

I have parts and fab capabilities if you need. Plus a lift to really make life easy. Call if you need anything in route. two five six 33769one9

dang...I think I can actually hear the rumbling 8's! lol. Good luck with the trip and have yourselves a blast!

Dang! Bill's wife can really cook. The Tai food was sooo good and sooo hot! I loss my voice from the heat, but I hope she invites us again.

It's true, I busted a CV with 15 miles on the new engine. There is no parts in my part of the country. I trailered the car about 180 miles to start the day. I went to Chappy's place and he fixed me up with an axle. Then I trailered the Alien to Bill's and we installed the axle and hit the road. The mother ship is in Bill's yard. Due to my break down we got a late start. We are currently in a Super 8 in Elpaso IL. We still have about 9 hours to travel. But so far so good.

Bill's Lil Bastard is fast and well sorted!

I have a funny story involving a herd of sheep. But that's for another time.

Anyone in Huntsville know the workings of the CIS K-jet? I'm running a little rich and have a high idle. (1100-1200 rpm's) I' thinking Auxilery air valve not fuctioning.

?

I think we can get you fixed up.

Awesome you guys!

Ferg

I made it home in 13 hours flat! The car didn't skip a beat all the way home. Probably because I was getting my foot into it. It only breaks when I baby it for some weird reason. It took about 20 hrs to get down to AL and I fricken hauled the mail home...holy shit! Had a fun time down there despite the two broken roller rockers I experienced on the way down and on the ramble to the Jack Daniels facility. Unfortunately the Lil Bastard wasn't as well sorted as Rick may have hoped...but it all ended quite well. Everyone thought I was out of commission... on the Jack Daniels run...hell, I would have driven the Little Bastard home on 5 cylinders if I had to.

Special thanks to Brett for the southern hospitality and willingness to help perform a 30 minute operation on my roller rockers. What a great guy!

One more thing, as far as putting a Porsche engine back in to "restore reliability" or to make it more "pure"...I have one thing to say about that..."Not gonna do it" . I'm just going to figure out why my new heads like to eat rockers...fix it...and forget about it. 530+ HP has spoiled me and I don't have the $ to create a Porsche engine that will do what an LS6 can do. Purists are a different lot.

Anyway, it was a very long drive (2000+ miles round trip) and I'm not sure I'll do it again. It was fun while it lasted.

Bill

YAAAY!!!

You guys are a scream.

I worried about those rockers, and as I discussed it with Alan McCrispin, our AX specialist, said "Thats spring bind." I said "What?" and he said "in a dual valve spring setup, one spring interferring with the other to prevent valve movement." Could that be the cause? Y'might want to consider it. Alans got major credentials.

Welcome home. is it cold tonight?

Scott,

I personally enjoyed your layed back sense of humor and your involvemnet in the RCR. You were one of the more memorable guys I met and would love to bump into you again in the near future. Great job!

I measured the coil bind issue at Brett's shop and it was well within spec. I have another valvetrain issue that has yet to be determined. Once I nail it down, I'll correct it...and forget about it.

Bill

Sweet! Nice to read you guys made it there and back. How did the Alien do?

Alien likes to drink fuel. Apparently it takes a lot of fuel to run the otherworldly systems on board. As far as reliability, it runs like a Swiss watch! Once Rick gets the fuel injection system leaned out and dialed in...it should get 25 miles to the gallon or more. I talked to Rick this morning and he is on his way home as we speak. He'll back to Area 51 this afternoon.

no bent pushrods? If you broke two rockers without bending a pushrod then you probably aren't bottoming anything out... sounds like the rockers may just be under-designed and too weak.

Usually the prods are the weak links in bottoming situations, not rockers. If the rockers are weaker than the pushrod stability, then they could break for any number of reasons, and maybe they are just failing because the yield slightly over and over and work harden the area then fail. Aluminum rockers right? I can't imagine a good steel rocker falling apart...

I have broken a total of 4 rockers in the course of 3000 miles. They have all failed in the same way. Basically, the the pushrods ram themselves up into the cup of the rocker and break the body of the rocker. It could be the result of too much preload on the hydraulic lifters...which in turn could be caused by a number of things: 1) Bad hydraulic lifters 2) pushrod length too long 3) One head decked more than the other (all failures have been on the passenger side head) 5) block decked unevenly 6) Spring pressure not enough and allowing valve float 7) some combination of the above

Any other ideas? I'm planning on taking the heads off and having them thoroughly checked out by Trickflow. If there is a problem, they will find it.

Bill

have a pic of a broken rocker?

so the push rod is pushing thru the rocker at the push rod cup 10/4?

so the heads are trick flow and not gm?

are the push rods on the other side the same length?

who assembled the heads? are the spring seats the same height?

stock lifters?

sounds like the push rods grew.....?????

The pushrods behave normally for up to 500-1000 miles and then suddenly one will decide to jump up and bang into the cup of the rocker and blast it to smithereens

The heads are Trickflow and not based on a GM casting. They require the use of aftermarket roller rockers. The first set failed 3 times (Scorpion)...the 2nd set are better (Yella Terra) and have failed once.

Pushrods are all hardened Trickflow 5/16 7.7" length that TFS (Trickflow)recommends. Yes they are the same on both sides.

TFS assembled the heads and I assume they do pretty accurate machining for a pair of $2400 heads. But I'll have them measured and checked through thoroughly by Total Engine Airflow.

Lifters are LS7 hydraulic lifters with about 5000 miles on them. They are currently the best hydraulic lifter for all LS series engines including LS1 thru LS7.

I think either the machining is off a bit (perhaps from the previous owner). They are a used set of heads so they did not come directly new from TFS. They had about 5k on them and were advertised as being in perfect shape. Perhaps the previous owner had a problem with them and had unknown decking or machine work done on them or only one of them. The passenger side rockers are the only ones that have been breaking and it seems to me that there is something wrong with that particular head. Maybe it was repaired and decked more than the other one causing more lifter preload. I set up lifter preload on the driver's side head and felt comfortable that both heads are machined exactly the same. I now believe it to be a good idea to have these heads measured and looked at closely by TEA and see what they find. If they find nothing wrong with them, then I have a problem with either pushrod length or hydraulic lifter issues.

Thanks for any advice or ideas.

Bill

pic of damaged Scorpion rocker

Don't assume TFS heads are "slam dunks". When I worked for Ford Performance Solutions in the 90s they had a few sets of their (then new) twisted wedge heads wipe the guides out in under 3K miles.

We weren't having any issues on our engines. Turns out they sold a set of "recommended" pushrods with their heads - I never pay any attention to that crap and only put pushrods in that I have personally measured based on getting perfect geometry. Turns out we ran pushrods 1/4" longer (on good blocks with non-decked new heads) than they recommended.

They had a HUGE recall and replaced the guides (we said unnecessary but we believe that was their "excuse" v. saying they were stupid) but also included the longer prods we spec'd out. No issues after that.

I would say you need to really look at the geometry and make sure the prod length makes sense. Also, take a pair of calipers and measure from one of outer bolt pads to the deck at each end and make sure they are similar. Then check that dim against the other head - that will quickly tell you if they were decked or there is an inconsistency in machining. They are symmetric heads so they all roll off the exact same assy line but hell, you may have an early casting on one side and some sort of improved later casting on the right (wouldn't be the first time I have seen that).

Scorpions aren't that great and Yella Terra ain't much better. You should be OK with a hyd roller but you couldn't give me either brand for my race engines (and FPS sold 'em both all the time but not something I would run).

Too hard to type, PM your # again and I will call you

i'd run a dial off of base the cam for the push rod to the rocker pad measurement on both banks to tell whats up.

Were home, Looks like your getting some good info here.

The TFS heads have had there quality problems solved. I remember that issue that Tim mentioned as well. Supposedly they fixed that issue with the Ford heads. It won't be an issue with the LS series heads.

Bill and I measured the spring coil clearance and I measure a little more than .060 between all the coils at full lift. Like others mentioned a rocker arm geometry check is definitely in order.

I realize solid lifters can be a pain in the ass, but at least there is no confusion in the lifter preload. Either they are right or they make a lot of noise. May look at that as an option.

Yeah Brett,

I'm starting to consider a solid cam and solid lifters. I'm going to pull the heads and have them looked at closely to see if there are any machining differences. Before I pull them, I'm going to get a second opinion on my preload. If the preload seems excessively high, I'll try shorter pushrods. we'll get to the bottom of it. Hey Brett, I think I set a new WR getting home in 13 hours! The car seems to like the higher RPMs.

I agree TFS fixed a lot of issues, but I wouldn't put it passed them to mess up something new. Most likely the heads are good but not guaranteed.

don't arbitrarily try short pushrods. I missed the pic of the broken rocker (you posted it while I was typing my previous post). I bet they press the cup in, have too little meat there and the hoop stress combined with some issue you have is causing the rockers to fail. To do that damage and not damage a Prod means the rocker is weak.

As for Prod length, with bolt down rockers, you need to watch how much compression you get in the lifter to determine pushrod length. Geometry is unadjustable other than shimming, but that should be kept to a minimum.

Sometimes lifters don't want to bleed down while you adjust and they want to lift the valve - that is okay. The old-skool rule of thumb still applies in that you should finger tighten to zero slack, then have only an additional 1/2 to 3/4 of a turn to seat the rocker on the stand, then you final torque. If you get more than a full turn you should consider shorter pushrods and that is the only reason to do that.

After it is fully seated and torqued, then you roll the engine over by hand and verify geometry. I wrote a magazine article on how to correctly read rocker geom about 10yrs ago now for one of the Ford magazines now that I think about it hahaha - forgot about that 'til now. Anyway...

It is completely possible that the geom is F'd up from the factory - a set of aftermarket Chevy heads came out about 2yrs ago cast in China, machined in Australia and hit the states (this is pretty much standard procedure for all the alum heads and many are being machined in China now as well). The geometry was complete crap, so the owner of the biz having the heads done came by Troy's shop (I was correcting this stuff while I was visiting him hahahaha) and we showed him that he had to relocate the stud 1/8" to fix it. Little crap like that will make a huge difference in geometry. I really shoulda charged that guy for that he has made a FORTUNE on those heads now.

Great idea. It will tell me if there are any machining differences.

you could also check it against the spring seat also.

the geometry being off is the most likely culprit, but you'd think it would be glaringly apparent to cause this kind of and frequent failure.

is it only breaking intakes or exhuast? or both?

i just can't help but think after looking at the photo of the broken rocker that there is very little "meat" around and above the push rod cup.. me thinks very bad design.

Both. And only pass side.