Who has had success with a roller cam big block?

[Kern Dog]

The Pre Val is around ten bucks too. CHEAP and simple.

[Kern Dog]

Sometimes the prices of stuff sure jumps since the last time you bought it.
A 10 oz tube of "The Right Stuff" is forty bucks now? A Wix 51515 oil filter is fifteen?
I got two filters since I figure I should change the oil before and after the swap. Hydraulic lifters mean I set the preload and close it up. I tried to but Valvoline VR 1 in a 10 w 30 but couldn't find it at three stores I tried, only 20 w 50 and it is not advised to use oil that thick with these lifters. Amazon lists the 10 w 30 but won't ship it to California. I'll have to go to Summit Racing in Sparks Nevada.

[Kern Dog]

Finally I got off my ass and got to it. I don't know what the heck was holding me from it except.... me.
Here it is with the current setup, a Lunati solid flat tappet cam with .016 lash intake, .018 exhaust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWqinx3e8eM

It runs strong and makes great power but isn't great for speeds much below 2000 rpms. It doesn't run bad, it just isn't that snappy from idle. Vacuum at idle is around 7-8" in neutral around 1000 rpms. I did a cranking compression test:

1) 172...2) 175
3) 175...4) 172
5) 178...6) 178
7) 180...7) 172

I was pleased to see the numbers so close. The plugs looked good.
There may be 3000-3500 miles on the plugs, much of it has been just putting around locally.
I tell you, spark plug access with 2" headers is not great. The battery is in the way, the brake booster makes for a crappy obstacle too. The left side...Numbers 2 and 4 have to be reached from underneath while laying on the floor. There was no misfiring going on so I'll clean and reuse these.

[Kern Dog]

Tear down is complete.
Most everything came off easily. It is surprising though how despite no obvious major leaks, the engine does get dirty. I need to inspect the rocker arms and shafts but I may just move forward with buying new. This Howard's timing setup is still tight...






The lifters all came out easily.
I put them in the exact order they were in the engine.



All look beautiful.



You can see the tiny EDM direct oiling hole.



The cam looks the same as when I installed it in 2022. Yeah... I took an engine apart that ran fine. Here is a partial pile of parts to stow in the parts shed.



Roller lifters are taller so I'll need shorter pushrods. I needed a 3 bolt timing set so this one bolt setup will be saved and used elsewhere. I may keep this cam and use it in another engine or I may sell it. I'm not sure yet. Buying and using used camshafts make some people really nervous. I bought one from a FBBO member for Jigsaw and it is great.
No mock up or trial fitment today. I do have some mineral spirits.
I'll clean the cam and lube it up before putting it in. The last time I did a cam swap was well over 10 years ago and I was disappointed to find the new cam did not want to go in and turn smoothly. That required a few extra steps to get right. Using my cheap calipers, the journal sizes do match up.



Overall, it was a good day. I entirely forgot about the football game today.

[Kern Dog]

Good news! The dent in the A/C condenser poses no problem.



I had the unit pressure tested while being dunked in a tank of water. It made no bubbles with 120 psi of air pressure in it so the guy said it would be fine.
$48 to test versus $250 for a new one including shipping.
I have an idea on something. In 2024, I did a Vintage Air installation in a friend's 68 Plymouth. I worked hard to get the underhood components to look as clean and well sorted since the car itself was so nice.
I did my own A/C system in 2019 and while I'm not embarrassed with the work, one thing that I didn't quite like was the placement of the # 6 line over the top of the hood latch support.



I want to hide it by running it this way:




The cool thing is, I have the stuff here to do it. This will tuck it away and clean this area up. I'm thinking of painting that support black to blend into the "blackout" theme better even though it is factory correct to be body color.

[Kern Dog]

The heads are off. I expected it to be more difficult given how hard it is to install headers in these cars. The car is sitting on 4 x 6 blocks...



Using the floor jack, I lifted the engine off the K member to gain access to the lower row of head bolts. Headers are still in the car but unbolted.



I cleaned up both heads. I'll take them to my machinist tomorrow to see about a light resurface.



They might not need it, I'll let him decide.



The crappy, flaky paint is gone. Onto cleaning some parts....

[Kern Dog]

Yesterday, I bought these:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/pqx-3244012/make/dodge
Along with header and collector gaskets. The intake has been tough. The paint that came off the heads so easily has not been as flaky on the intake. I tried scraping, wire wheeling, sandblasting but finally resorted to paint stripper.

[Kern Dog]

The intake is almost ready for paint.





This paint stripper...



It was my last resort. Acetone didn't wrinkle this paint but I'd bet if I sprayed my hood it would wrinkle up like Tommy Lee Jones.
Another round of scraping and wire wheeling followed by sandblasting. It should be ready for this now....



Unfortunately it is not warm enough to paint and rain is in the forecast for several days. There is still plenty to do.

[Kern Dog]

Friday, a fellow Mopar buddy and I went to the Summit racing store in Nevada. He got a few things, I got oil, gaskets and these:





They do look nice, but do you see anything out of place?



Well they load the rocker arms all lefts on one shaft, rights on the other... sort of.
Why are there 9 lefts and 7 rights ? The box was opened when I got it but when I opened it, everything seemed to be there except the instructions. Now I see either PRW messed up or some piece of shit customer bought, then returned them as an incomplete set. I'll have to call them tomorrow and see if they will just ship one right hand side. This is the second incomplete part I bought from Summit. The roller cam button was missing its collar. The package it was in was intact though. If I had looked closer while still at the store, I may have caught it. Dirtbag car guys will do this shit... break something then buy a replacement and return their used POS for a refund. Summit should have caught this if that were the case.
Years back I ordered a clutch and received a box that had been opened and inside was a wrong size pressure plate despite the part number on the box being what I had ordered.
That idiot I used to know that lived in a tee pee did shit like this.

[Kern Dog]

This is my first time setting valve spring installed height. Bear with me here... what you see may differ from how you do it. Feel free to chime in to let me know how you would do it different.
On the work bench, I laid down cardboard then made brackets to secure the head to the table.



The hillbilly spring tool was used.



The first spring was removed along with the seal, locks and retainer. I removed the steel seat at the bottom to make sure nothing was underneath it. All looked good so I put the measuring tool in place along with the original locks and retainer. The installed spring height spec I'm aiming for is 1.860 plus or minus .010 so that means a range between 1.850 and 1.870.
The measuring tool:



Old 7 degree locks on the left, new 10 degree locks on the right. Notice how much more robust the 10 degree locks are:



I started with the exhaust valve of what could be cylinder #1 or #8 depending on which side this head will be mounted on. It measured 1.858 with no shims, just the steel spring seats. The intake valve height measured 1.885, .025 taller than spec. I slipped in a .030 shim...









This brought the installed height to 1.855, within the spec.

[Kern Dog]

This morning I called Summit Racing. The rocker arm and shaft kit I got came with 9 of one side, 7 of the other...



They are sending out a single rocker arm and they told me to keep the oddball since it wasn't worth it to send it back.
The process of measuring for installed height may be familiar to some of you but for a lot of us, it is not something we do often, if ever.
Today I got one head finished. The valves were removed and cleaned...



The seats in the heads were cleaned too.



The head was secured to the table again and the measuring began. I decided to measure, shim if needed, measure again and move to the next valve. I put the valve springs in after all the measuring was done, being careful to keep all the retainers and locks set aside for each cylinder that they were measured on.
Head A, cylinder 1, Exhaust....



This one worked without shims. Cyl 1 Intake got the same shim I used yesterday to get this number:



That is how it went. All of the heights came in within the .010 spec. The springs, retainers and locks were not easy to install for a few reasons.
1) The springs are STIFF. There are dual springs with a damper.
2) The locks and retainers are new, no wear on them to loosen them a bit.
3) My hillbilly spring tool worked but needs some refinement.
4) The valves dropped down during installation which made me have to compress the spring further to get the locks in place.
I do have a few ideas on how to make it easier for the second head I still need to do.
Nothing that I can do about the #1 issue, same with #2. The spring tool has a U shaped flat spot that needed to be dressed with a deburring bit to make the rearmost edge further back.



This helps with access to the far side of the valve stem. The underside of the flat spot has a weld bead right at the tube it is on.
I had to grind the weld down because the edges of the spring retainer were hitting it and not allowing the retainer to sit squarely on the spring. I made the mistake of putting all the oil seals on, then measuring for installed height.
Doing so meant that at every spring that needed a shim required me to remove the oil seal, then put it back on. Not a big deal but a wasted step.
For #4, I'm going to put rags in each combustion chamber when I secure the head to the table. This should help keep the valves on their seats as I am compressing the spring to put the retainers and locks in place. Not having to compress the spring so far will help a LOT.
Also, I've found that when installing the locks, the spring tool seems to try to push the spring away from the shaft. I found that a stiff standard screwdriver or small prybar can be used to push the retainer and spring back into position so the locks will go in. I put one lock on the far side first, then the near side last.

[Kern Dog]

It is a bit unnerving that the bag of locks has exactly 32 of them. Those things are easy to lose. The retainers are big enough, you can't really lose them.





These are Isky 8005A springs...



The specs below are listed at a 1.875 height. My height is tighter which raises the rate, right?



One thing that I find interesting is that if the heads didn't have cracking paint on them, I would have left them on the engine. I didn't want to risk getting paint flakes in the lifter valley or down an intake port. Removing them for cleaning allowed me to pull the valves and clean up everything else. This also gave me a better valve seal and a more accurate reading for the installed height. Having the heads on the bench will make it easier to set up the spacers and shims for the new rocker arm setup.

[70 sublime]

I do not get it

Why ? 

Why does it need them all the exact same ?
Why are they not the same to start with ?
Did you measure all the valves to see if they are the same length to start with ?
What real difference does this make all this fooling around in the end ?
Are the valves not all the way shut when at rest ?
Is valve #4 going to wear a tiny bit more than valve #2 if you do not do this ?
Are you going to notice in 10 000 miles from now cylinder #7 has 10 pounds less compression than cylinder #5 ??

Yes some people like to tinker and I get it
I like to tinker too

I just do not know what the upside of all this is from the original factory slap it together set up is ?

[Kern Dog]

I sure don't know everything but here are a few things...
Installed height affects the spring rate of the valve springs. If the camshaft is designed to work with a certain spring rate and you use the wrong one, the valves may not close as fast as they are supposed to and the pistons may hit the valves.
For someone that never exceeds 3000 rpms or never accelerates rapidly, you will not notice the springs are not right.
Having the heights all set to a specific range means that the engine can safely operate within the range that the camshaft is designed to operate.
In simpler terms, if I had lower rate springs with this setup, by 3000 rpms or more, the heavy roller lifters would cause the valves to never fully close, costing power and eventually causing major damage.
Have you ever heard a man use the term "float the valves" ?
That is the condition where as the rpms increase, they hit a point where the engine starts to misfire and will not go any faster. Setting the installed height assures you that the valves will close at the range of operation that the camshaft is designed to run in.
The reason that each valve reads different can be for any number of reasons.
Each seat where the valves rest could vary by a slight amount.
The length of the valves could vary some.
The pocket where the springs sit could be a few thousands higher or lower than the one next to it.
With a mild hydraulic cam, you can have all the installed heights a bit different and you'd never know it because the hydraulic lifters take up the slack. If an engine runs out of breath by 5000 rpms, you'd never run it to the point where the inconsistent spring rates really matter.
The old cam I had was a Lunati solid lifter unit that made power well past 6000 rpms. The engine flat out R I P P E D... If I still had an automatic, I may have lived with it. I have a Tremec 5 speed manual though and it does not like to shift at engine speeds over 6000 rpms. If I ran it to 6400, I'd have to wait a moment to upshift because it just would not go into gear. This cam is designed to make power at lower rpms so it will be a better fit.

[Kern Dog]

A few weeks back, I swapped engines in my 67 Dart. 1976 360 OUT, 1990 roller 360 IN.
The old engine ran fine but the oil pressure was not great. It didn't smoke or use oil but in late 2023 I bought another 360 from a friend that just wanted to get rid of it.
The '76 360 made great power but felt like it hit a wall around 4000 rpms. It just flattened out and didn't want to rev any higher. It had a bigger cam than stock, good heads and dual exhaust so it should have run well up to 6000 rpms.
The 1990 360 had blown head gaskets so I went through it, replaced the pistons and rebuilt it all. It has a roller cam with less duration than the '76 360 but more lift. The valve springs in the 1990 engine were also replaced with springs matched for the operating range of the cam.
This new 360 flat out RIPS at all engine speeds. It does not flatten out at high rpms, it just keeps pulling. BOTH engines have the exact same #308 heads. I credit the valve springs for part of the difference in higher rpm performance.

[70 sublime]

OK  so all this is to help all the valves to shut more consistently at higher RPM s
Well you did drive this engine before the swap so you will be able to report back if you can tell it makes a difference 

[Charger-Bodie]

I do not get it

Why ? 

Why does it need them all the exact same ?
Why are they not the same to start with ?
Did you measure all the valves to see if they are the same length to start with ?
What real difference does this make all this fooling around in the end ?
Are the valves not all the way shut when at rest ?
Is valve #4 going to wear a tiny bit more than valve #2 if you do not do this ?
Are you going to notice in 10 000 miles from now cylinder #7 has 10 pounds less compression than cylinder #5 ??

Yes some people like to tinker and I get it
I like to tinker too

I just do not know what the upside of all this is from the original factory slap it together set up is ?

This is actually good info. if youve ever heard of and engine thats balanced and blue printed ? This is a partial look into that. It is a lot of work but on some engines this will make a huge difference in performance and long life.

[Kern Dog]

I'll bet that most people, myself included, have assembled parts and accepted what results that they get.
Converting a classic engine to a roller camshaft carries with it several changes to make it work. Measuring and establishing the Installed spring height is on par with measuring bearing clearances, degreeing a camshaft, tailoring your timing curve, rejetting the carburetor, adjusting the pressure in your tires, etc.
It is a matter of aiming for a more precise level of fitment that will allow the engine to make the most power and work as efficiently as possible.