O.K., so after many days of grease in my hair and under fingernails, the motor and trans are installed.

Running good (other than a bad water pump) and while adjusting the valves for the first time, I realize there is not really much oil, even though I poured oil all over the head while filling the motor. Oil pressure is 45 psi at cold idle.

Removing the rear rocker arm bolt reveals a little spurt of oil, but hardly what I expected. Removing the rear head bolt reveals a slow and pulsating flow of oil which does not increase when the rpm is increased. When the motor is stopped, the oil drains back very quickly, this concerns me.?

Doesn't seem like as much oil as I've seen in other running motors. I wish I didn't know that it is likely to be due to cam/bearing trouble deep within the motor. I just hate to have to pull it back out. What a drag.

What will happen to at dried up top end and how quickly will it turn into damage? Should I just trailer the car to this last race and then worry about the cam this winter? This motor was running when I purchased it, and the old set of rockers don't seem badly worn. Am I being overly concerned?

Somebody encourage me to do something, because I'm just about tired of working on this car right now. Too many projects going at the same time. Tonight I need to replace the water pump on the Scamp and next I need exhaust on the truck. Aspen and Truck need state inspection ASAP, so more is bound to crop up.

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1980 Aspen 225 super six

On the mechanical lifter slants the oil is metered by the hole drilled in the rear cam shaft journal. There is NOT full flow oil pressure to the rocker shaft. After the engine runs a few minutes you should see oil coming out the top of all the rocker arms. That's all the oil it gets.

I was kind of in the same boat as you, after we put my son's slant back in his '74 Dart Sport. Upon its first fire-up, I expected to have oil gushing all over the place while we set the valve lash. Didn't happen. We had NO oil to the top, whatsoever.

After a few replies to my posts here and elsewhere, we finally were led to checking the oil passage hole in the rear rocker shaft pedestal. After a few attempts to actually find the hole, I did penetrate the baked-in sludge and grime, and punched through with a slender screwdriver. I rodded the passage out completely, and upon the next startup, was showered with a strong squirt of fresh oil.

That still didn't fix the problem completely.

Next, we removed all the rocker arms and rodded each of them with a stiff thin wire, until a shot of WD-40 could blast through both (yes, there are two) passages. Once re-installed and adjusted, the rocker arms now have a steady "dribble" of oil to the tip over the lifters, and some of it flows back down the "trench" along the top of the arm to spill back over the push rods. A mechanical pressure gauge I installed shows a steady 45-50 psi.

It isn't the sloppy spray I envisioned, but I believe it's plenty of oil to adequately keep everything lubed properly. My concern was like yours. Did the bearing holes line up properly, and was my Comp Cam drilled correctly? I guess time will tell.

Jerry

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There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
Ignorance is not knowing any better.
Stupidity is knowing, yet doing it anyway.

i dont think much oil is required to the rocker. i had my engine rebuilt and all the oil that comes from the rockers is justa slow flow out the rockers. the important stuff that need the 40-50 psi oil pressure is down in the block(cam,crand,rods). my engine now has more than 30,000 miles on it and still running strong.

zedpapa

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1970 dodge dart w/225 /6 bored .040" over, holley 390cfm w/vac. sec., compcams 252s, clifford shorty headers w/2.5" exhaust w/flowmaster, f-body 11" front discs, aluminum A-833OD, 8 1/4 w/3.21 SG
soon to have 5 gears!!!

Yes, I agree with most of what has been said, but I've got several other motors and adjusted several sets of rockers. This isn't my first day working on a slant six, and I have an idea of what is 'normal' from the other 3 motors I've worked on this month. This is the same head and rockers that just came off of the old motor, only the block was changed.

I know that there was a lot more oil flowing when it was installed on the old block, and when you opened the trottle, oil would splash off the rocker arms and make a hot mist all over the place. Not a heavy spray, but enough to ruin a nice white shirt.

Not this motor, there is hardly any oil comming up. I took the middle bolt out of the rocker shaft, and it is not filling up with oil, or more exactly, no oil is flowing into the shaft at all. I hate to have to break it to me, but something is wrong. I'm gonna try to rod out the oil passages, but I did a visual inspection prior to assembly, and the passages in the head were clear as day.

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1980 Aspen 225 super six

Well I admit you are way ahead of me. This is the first slant six (actually, first engine ever) that I have worked on. When we discovered our oiling problem, I didn't know there was a passage coming up from the rear rocker pedestal. The head had been hot vatted and bead blasted. On the surface, it shined like a brand new nickel. Unfortunately, I didn't know to check passages for clearance. When I found it clogged, it took a few minutes to ream the crud out. I'm not surprised one bit. When we first broke this engine down for rebuilding, the whole area under the valve cover was a nasty, thick, caked-on crud that came off in large chunks.

Are you confident that the oil pick up is not clogged, or installed too high above the floor of the pan? Just grasping for straws at this point.

Jerry

_________________
There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
Ignorance is not knowing any better.
Stupidity is knowing, yet doing it anyway.

It's either a plugged passage down through the head or block to the cam bearing, a spun or partially spun rear cam brg, or blocked passages below that. Try reaming out the top half with a flexible shaft, maybe like a manual choke cable housing or smaller piece of wire.

I spun the rear cam bearing putting in a new cam that was tight once. Pulled the cam back out, stuffed an oily rag in where the rear cam brg is, drilled a new hole in the top of the cam brg w/ a long 3/16" drill bit, cleaned out the shavings and it worked fine, all w/ motor in the car.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

This sounds like nearly as much work as just pulling the motor on my model of car. The head is the new version, and I don't think lifters can be easily removed without taking the head off. I don't look forward to crawling under the car and trying to remove the oil pan with the engine installed either, clearance is an issue. Everything is freshly assembled and half the bolts arn't even torqued yet, so the motor will come out easy if I just put my mind to it again. Many other projects have been delayed too long for me to start back on the Aspen right now, and money is very tight so that I can't afford to have anyone else do the scamp's waterpump and trucks exhaust.

Once I get back to working on it, I'll try and dig this post up and let everyone know what was wrong, but don't hold your breath waiting.

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1980 Aspen 225 super six

Since you have good oil pressure, 45 psi, that rules out having the oil pickup to close to the pan. If it was too close, you wouldn't have any oil pressure at all.

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82 D150-225/727
02 Dakota-3.9/5 speed
87 GMC C7000-8.2 Detroit Diesel/5+2