Flywheel bolts dug into block...how screwed am I?

[drdano]

I didn't have my input splines hit the pilot bushing like you did, the input shaft hit the bottom of the crank pilot hole when I tried with the shorter bellhousing.  But, that was on the old motor, the block and crank are different on this one and I've now learned a good lesson to recheck E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.   

I got the motor torn down to a shortblock.  I'm not going to pull the cam or the piston assemblies.  I'll have the machine shop do that and when they are done reassemble the short block for me.  I did find some interesting things in the process.  Top of the motor looks clean, no chunks of any bearing material found anywhere.

Roller Rocker adjusters and Pushrods
The adjusters on my Comp Cam roller rockers look..not so great.  There are two that were bad enough that when rotating the pushrod around it had a few stiff spots in it.  The cup of the corresponding pushrods looks like it wasn't rotating and was starting to cut a trough.  Looking at the other adjuster balls...I'm not impressed at all with the quality here.  These should be perfectly round and it looks like when they are made they just cut off the bottoms of them and don't de-burr the edge that is created there.  I think that edge caused the problems here.  I'll order new adjusters for all of the rockers and a few new pushrods from Smith Brothers to replace the ones that look suspect.  Looks like a problem caught early here, which is good.  If anyone has a recommendation for better adjuster screws that work better, please let me know.

Valve tips
The valve tips have a wear pattern in them already after only 2hrs of total run time and no rpms above 2500.  The wear pattern is centered over the tip, which indicates proper pushrod length, however I can barely catch my nail on the edges of the wear pattern.  This doesn't seem right.  Should the wear be so deep so fast?


Cylinders
This is the scuffing I was seeing from the bottom end.  None of it is deep enough to catch a nail on, looks about as deep as the honing.  I didn't pull the pistons, so I don't know what the rings or skirts looks like, but hopefully it is all reusable with just a honing job.

[jayb]

The marks on the cylinder wall look normal, but what is that squarish discoloration shown in the photo?  Is that just an artifact of the photo, or is the bore really discolored there?  Looks kind of strange...

The wear on the valve tips is a concern; that indicates that the tips were not hardened properly when they were manufactured.  Especially after only a couple hours, you should never see that.  The solution is to put lash caps on the valve stems (easy and pretty cheap) or replace the valves (not easy or cheap).

I've been told that Comp's FE roller rockers are manufactured by Dove.  Quality can be a concern with any Dove products, although I can't say I've ever had any problems with my Comp rocker arms (I have one set).  I'd replace the adjusters if the balls don't look good, and run 'em.

[drdano]

The square discoloration is where I got a nice plop of coolant when I pulled the head off.  I wiped the cylinder right there.  None of the bores have anything weird or discolored, but they do all have the same vertical marks.  We'll call those normal.

If the overall height of the lash cap is low enough, I might be able to get away with them.  I'm using +.050 locks right now to get the spring installed height where it needs to be.  I've got a set of -.100" pushrods I can use as well if need be.

"manufactured by Dove"...great.  Yea, I've heard of the hit-n-miss quality and that is definitely apparent with these rockers.  I've already stripped out several of the allen holes in the adjusters just from setting them up.  Not a top shelf quality part for sure.  On a few of the valve tips I noticed that the wear pattern didn't extend all the way across the tip face, so either the roller isn't square or valve tip isn't.  What would be the next step up quality wise from these roller rockers?  Harland Sharp?

[hotrodfeguy]

DR Brown has you spot on

[Barry_R]

Any idea who made the valves?  Were the tips ground to equalize heights during assembly?  I ask because virtually all stainless valves require a harened tip be added - usually a wafer of hardenable steel friction welded to the top of the stem.  A few higher end valves - notably Ferrea - can induction harden the tips, since stainless is normally not very conducive to normal hardening.

[drdano]

I don't have a clue on the valve manufacturer.  All of the valve tips were level, yes.  They are not stamped FoMoCo like factory ones I've seen.  I'll snap a few photos, maybe you can tell who made them. 

[jayb]

A good friend of mine who builds a lot of engines for his customers has had some trouble with Harlan Sharp stuff recently, but by most accounts they have a good rocker arm.  You might also consider Precision Oil Pumps for rockers, although you would then also need ball-ball pushrods to work with them.

[drdano]

The machinist called this morning with the damage, some better than expected, some worse.  The crank thrust surfaces are way too trashed to clean up and use an oversized thrust surface bearing, so the crank is getting welded up to fix that.  Apparently the #3 main also go so hot it heat distorted .003" and so the block will also need a fresh align hone.  That was unexpected, but nice they checked it.  This also means I will probably get to play musical timing chains again to try to get one that will not have a ton of slop in it after the align hone. 

On the bright side, there was no other internal damage and no bearing chips managed to destroy anything else.  The block is getting a good scrubbing and all the oil galleries are being cleaned out as well.  Also there was no damage to any other bearing surfaces, so that tells me the chunks of bearing didn't make it past the oil filter.  They also said the cylinders look a-ok and I could re-use my rings even. 

I'm also ordering up today a different input shaft for my TKO600.  I have the 5008 short shaft installed in it now, and will go back to the regular 26 spline Ford style shaft.  That should fix the shallow pilot and clutch engagement issues and hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.  I may post some photos on how to swap out the input shaft as I can't find any tutorital online on how to do it.

[Cyclone03]

Make sure the standard length input does not bottom the splines to the pilot bearing.

[My427stang]

Dano,
Are you using a truck bellhousing?  I just can't see any other way that the input could end up so short. 

The truck bell uses an input length equal to the SBF, and may explain why yours didnt have the reach it needed

[drdano]

I'm using the standard depth Quicktime TKO600/T5 bellhousing, even though the TKO500 has a short shaft on it.  I started with the short version of the bell on my old 390 but it caused the input shaft to bottom out in the crank.  Oddly the combo worked a-ok on the 390, but there must be a minor difference in the crank flywheel mounting face vs block bellhousing mounting face distance between the old 390 and new 428.  The long input shaft should be 1/2" longer than I have now and resolve the issue.  If the splines bottom out in the pilot bearing, but the input doesn't, I'll take Cyclones advice and have the pilot machined to fit.  I really think everything should work, I've spent way too much time measuring and remeasuring it all.   

[lovehamr]

I had the same issue, took a few pics and posted what I found on club cobra.  I'll try to post what I had and did.

This first pic is through the starter opening in the BH and you can see that the splined part of the input shaft is up against the pilot bearing.



The next image is looking at the gap between the trans and the bellhousing with the input shaft grounded as in the first pic.



As you can see there isn't much of a gap there and the PB isn't sticking very far out of the back of the crank.  And I'm not using a spacer.  I think I'm just going to have about .250" machined from the front of the spline on the input.  The disc will still have plenty of room and the trans will then seat in the BH without any pressure on the crank.

And this is what I did:

Just a follow up for everyone who may be interested.  Here is the input shaft with about .250" machined away.



Steve

Hope that helps.

[drdano]

Great photos and explaination.  I didn't have my splines hit the pilot bushing on the old 390, but the input shaft hit the bottom of the crank pilot hole before the trans was snugged all the way to the bellhousing just like in the photo.  This was odd because it was with the "correct" short QT bellhousing and why I swapped to the deeper bell.

You really could have got away with taking 1/8" off of the input shaft and still been ok from the looks of the photos. 

Did you remove the input shaft yourself?  Do you have any good steps for how to do that?  Another forum member had a good idea of placing the trans supported on the front in a vertical position so you could unbolt the retainer from the front and gently slide it out.

[Cyclone03]

lovehamr that is exactly the pronlem I had.

In your spline to bearing shot is that a bearing or bushing?

Are you running an after market crank as I am?

Like I said on my crank I could use a 5.0 pilot bearing in a deeper recess in my crank.

drdano even with the correct depth bell the pilot may need to be shortened,Ford did this on the big block top loader 4 speeds.

[lovehamr]

lovehamr that is exactly the pronlem I had.

In your spline to bearing shot is that a bearing or bushing?

Bearing

Are you running an after market crank as I am?

Yup, Scat.