This doesn't look good...

[SanitysBane]

Well I finally found out what went wrong with Red. Heres a little recap for thoes of y'all that don't know; I drove home from a friends house and looked down at my oil presure gague which was sitting on 0. I shut the motor off, called dad and he towed me home. We checked the gague with another one we had laying around the shop, gague was good. So then we tried the filter, filter wasn't plugged, so then we pulled the oil pan. Now let me recap, this is a 1/2 truck with a big block in it. Pulling the oil pan is very easy in a 1/2 with a small block or a 3/4 with a big block, but a 1/2ton with a big block is a royal pain the butt, after pulling the transmission out, the flexplate, then using a cherry picker to hoist up the motor I pulled out off the oil pan, and then pulled the pump, the problem? The oil pump drive gear shaft broke. So after replacing the pump, and putting on a new 1 piece oil pan gasket and getting everything put back together, I filled 'er up with oil, and cranked her, with no mufflers that big block is music to my ears...except that I had a dead miss. Well after some checking I find out that it is number 3 cylinder. I had bought a new cap, coil, wires and wire loom for that motor for when I put it in Lucky 13, and I thought, "'Eh, just go ahead and stick them on." So I did, but the problem was oil fouled spark plug, how did it oil foul? Well the intake valve wasn't opening forcing oil around the rings, fun stuff. So why wasn't the intake valve opening? Well the picture below more or less explains it all, and you can see the number 4 exhaust valve lifter doing the same thing. I also found some lovely metal flakes in the lifter galley too... So I got a new camshaft and lifters on the way...maybe Red will run again... Below are also pictures of Lucky 13. She was complete til the day after I bought here, I attacked that project full force and now I have to stop to get my DD back in action.

[SanitysBane]

Lucky 13:

[79GMC_OLDS]

ouch man that sucks...good luck putting it back together

[MylilBowTie]

Those are some of the worst looking worn lifters Ive seen.

[N2TRUX]

WOW! Now that is a couple of worn out lifters...

[SanitysBane]

Lol I have seen worse, ever wonder why they tell you not to brake in a motor with synthetic oil? I have seen the results.

[68Stepbed]

j/k man. That's gotta suck.

[1976K5CHALET]

I hope you are going to pull that motor down all the way...i'll bet there is metal in the pump and all the oiling galleys throughout the block....

Years back i had just converted the chalet to FI and had cruised down to the gas station to fill her up for the first time. After i departed the station i hit the freeway to run the 10 miles between the 3 exits for this town....lol. Anyways while carefully monitoring my snap-on scanner by the time we had hit mile 5 we had issue's...the temp was up to 238...and i had to pull over and shut her down to cool the 400 down and limp home. Final report revealed that number 5 rod journal on the crank went south....in a bad way...not your average a few thousands out casuing a knock...it was more like a gap the size of a bearing babit itself. Only thing i could figure was while living in az for 12 years that poor 400 got hot once or twice...

It never fails...when you least expect it....


DW