New Piston on Order

Since we’ve eliminated every component of the valve train, the only other place the noise could be coming from is the bottom end of the engine. We know the top of the piston in cylinder #6 was heavily damaged by the nut, and it’s possible that it broke a ring or damaged the area around the wrist pin from the excessive forces of hitting TDC with a nut trapped in the cylinder’s squish area.

We called Ford Racing about this to get the part numbers for the damaged piston and ring set. They needed to have someone from another department look that up and told us they’d get back to us. Today, we got a shipping notice from Ford saying the parts will be here next week! No charge, apparently!

We need to pull the oil pan to remove the piston, and we can’t pull the oil pan with the chassis sitting on the car dolly, so we’re going to move the car over to the lift this weekend so that we can easily access the underside and drop the pan.

Pulled Intake Manifold and Head

I drained the coolant out of the block and pulled the intake manifold…

…then pulled the head. I had forgotten that this head was the one that was originally on the right side of the engine (and not the one that was more significantly damaged when the nut went through the engine). That makes me suspicious that the problem is not in the head. Given that we’ve eliminated everything in the valve train, there’s not much else that could be causing this problem.

Further Engine Diagnosis

Work on our home remodel has taken virtually all of my spare time, but my dad and I have continued to speculate about what could be causing this noise. One thing we wished we had done when Dino got the noise to disappear the first time was swap the lifters between the suspect valve and another one. We got together a couple of times and tried to eliminate the noise again, but were unsuccessful. Dino offered to stop by again, so we took him up on the offer. He adjusted the lifter preload again with the engine running and managed to eliminate the noise again. Not too surprisingly, it was on exactly the same valve; the #6 intake valve.

We pulled the rocker and carefully examined it and the corresponding push rod. Not seeing any issues, we adjusted the #6 piston to TDC and used a spring compressor to remove and examine the spring and valve. Not too surprisingly, everything looked great.

Dino’s pretty convinced now the problem must be in the head. It’s clear that the problem is localized to the valve train and we’ve eliminated everything but the valve and guide (or potentially a crack in the head itself.  We have a new head on order, so I started pulling the engine apart.


I didn’t have a lot of time tonight, but I pulled the remaining rockers and push rods as well as the side pipe and exhaust manifold. I also pulled the air cleaner and distributor. Once I drain the coolant out of the block, I’ll pull the intake manifold and head.

Reassembled Engine (Again)

My dad stopped by tonight and helped me reassemble the engine again. We cleaned up the heads and reinstalled them with new gaskets, then dropped in the new Morel lifters. Fortunately, the new lifters were exactly the same height as the old lifters, so we could reuse the existing pushrods. While installing the lifters, we did take the opportunity to adjust a couple of the guide plates to put the rockers in the center of the valve stems.

After setting the preload on all of the lifters, we installed the intake manifold gaskets and the intake manifold. Finally, we reinstalled the exhaust headers and side pipes since that’s much easier to do with two people.

I still need to stab the distributor, hook up the electrical connections, install the air filter and fill the system with coolant before I can run the engine, but hopefully that will be pretty quick and we can run it tomorrow.

Head Work

My dad picked up the lifters from Dino today. Not too surprisingly, Dino did find a tiny amount of damage to the valves in cylinder #5 (where the nut spent most of the time). The valves were bent about 1-2 thousandths, probably caused by the nut getting pinched between the top of the piston and the partially open valve. Dino reground the valves so that they will seat properly in the head.

Removed Defective Lifters

My dad and I tore down the engine and removed the defective lifters. While we have the engine apart, I decided to pull the heads and have Dino double check there are no issues.

We have a set of Bullet (Morel) 5323 lifters on the way and we’ll get those installed shortly.

Resolved Engine Noise (Sorta)

My dad and I have been talking about possible resolutions to this engine noise issue we’ve had for months. At one point, I suggested that we ask Dino Fry (the guy who dynoed the engine for us) if he would be willing to stop by and help us diagnose the issue. My dad stopped by his shop and asked, and he was more than willing to come down.

We fired up the engine and almost immediately Dino said it sounded like lifter noise. That is what it has always sounded like to me too, but we replaced the lifters with no change to the sound. We pulled the rocker arm covers one at a time, and Dino used a timing light and screwdriver held up to his ear to analyze each rocker arm in turn. The #1 intake rocker and #4 exhaust rocker sounded different than the other six on that side, so he decided to adjust them with the engine running to see if he could get them to sound the same. Sadly, despite adjusting them so they all sounded the same, the engine noise persisted.

Despite that, he suggested we do the left side of the engine just to be sure. We pulled the valve cover and he repeated the adjustment for #5 through #8. While adjusting the rockers for #5 and #6, we heard a slight change to the sound. After letting the engine cool a bit, he loosened and reset the preload on the #5 intake lifter and suddenly the sound was gone! Sadly, the sound returns when you rev up the engine, but no longer occurs at idle. At this point, it’s pretty clear that we have another bad lifter. My dad is convinced that Crane just boxed up our original lifters and sent them back to us. It’s hard to imagine that two sets of lifters from them would be defective in the same way, so I’m inclined to agree with him. Regardless, we’re now certain that the noise is coming from the lifters, so we’ll be replacing them with something other than Crane lifters.

For now though, the engine is back together and runs nice and smooth (at least at idle)!

Project on Hold

As you’ve probably noticed, the rate of updates to the blog has slowed considerably. We’re starting a home remodel, so the car is going to take a bit of a back seat to that for awhile. I hope to occasionally work on the car, but I don’t expect to make significant progress until the remodel is done.