I pulled the valve cover off of the 225 in my '65 Valiant today, to check / adjust the valve tappets. That part of things went well, but things look a little dirty. There is a fairly large amount of sludge-



Oil flows pretty freely on most of the rocker arms, but not all of them. Some seem very dry while the engine is running.

Should I make an attempt to clean it up? Or use some kind of flush?

Run 20% Dexron in the engine for about 30 minutes of easy highway driving. It will clean a lot of that gunk out without hurting anything (may even free up a stuck oil ring!). Just change your filter and top off with dex, take a cruse, and change oil and filter as normal. Yours is nowhere near as bad as my first slant was and I had to do more than one fill of the mix but it cleaned everything up nicely.

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Dave

1977 d-200 crew cab ex-army pickup wants it's /6 back
1962 Valiant 2 door, 170, three on the tree
1972 d-100 parts truck
80 volare wagon now a parts car

I would love for mine to look that good. Did some clean up, but really need full clean up.

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ifyoubegintothinkyou'relosingcontrol...it'salreadygone

Yeah, It's not TOO bad. I'm going to just do a couple of oil changes to get it cleaned up as well as I can. I don't want to use any of the 5 minute "miracle" fixes as I've heard/read that they can cause more problems than they fix!

My only problem is that I don't drive this car much- Just the occasional cruise on weekends, so it'll take a while to get any kind of miles on it between oil changes...

-Andrew

That is not too bad.... running with regular oil changes and getting it hot on the highway can help that. Using a high dispersant oil will help too.

Dry rockers probably have some crud build-up in their internal oil passages blocking or reducing oil flow to push rods and the end that depress the valve.


One way to clean the rockers that are dry would be to remove the rocker shaft that all of them ride on, keeping all for the rockers & spacers in the order that they are currently in, remove each dry rocker one at a time and flush its internal passages with carb cleaner until they are clear and keep it in order with its brothers. I use a length of Romex and just string all the rockers off the shaft on to the wire cleaning each as they come off, and than back on the shaft once cleaned.

Here is how I remove the rocker shaft:

I just slowly back off the seven bolts securing the shaft to head turning each a few turns out so the shaft stays straight until all tension from valve springs is relived. Install is the reverse, tighten each bolt a few turns each so the shaft settles back into position keeping a mindful eye to guiding the push rods in place as the work progresses. I don't back off the lash, and once shaft is back and snug to head torque all seven bolts to 25 foot-pounds starting at center and working to both ends. The last bolt closest to fire wall is of special design to allow oil from the oil pump to flow into the shaft; make sure this bolt gets back where it came from, or no oil will make it to the valve train. Also keep track of the curved hold-downs under each bolt they are different sizes, and have to go back in the same position or the rockers wont be located correctly.

While you have the shaft free of its rockers and spacers give it it a good internal cleaning as well. Be careful to make note of where the oil holes for each rocker are orientated (holes should be facing the valve springs), and which end of shaft has the special oil supply bolt. It has to go back correctly.

While the shaft is off of the head, take a look down the bolt hole that supplies oil to shaft, one closest to fire wall, for sludge buildup.

If you do some scrapping in oil supply hole, turn engine over enough to pump up oil from pump to flush out any chunks. It shouldn't take more than a few revolutions to move a little bit of oil up, and float out that black scale so you can capture it before it runs down into lifter bore.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC