Ya,..... Started when I'd hear this ticking noise turning into a larger clunking noise and then got worse from there.

Street car, went through 3 Cam Motion cams, two blocks, an oil pan and guessing three sets of lifters, few sets of K-Motion springs and could never get them to live on the street. Don't even remember all the brands of lifters, but the last set for sure was Crane.

Needless to say I have a hydraulic cam currently w/no plans of changing soon. Blame it on my bad Karma.

 

How long ago was this?.

 

my idle oil pressure is a little lower than I would like it to be but I still have the stock oil pump right now. I put in the white spring to up the pressure in the original pump but that pump went bad and so I had to install a new oil pump and I just havent put in the new spring. Right now at normal operating temperature and around 1000 rpm's, the car sits at about 25 psi. If I give it any gas, the pressure immediately goes up to 45 psi and in the higher rpm's it will get almost to 60 psi.

 

Thats not too bad considering Solids arent really meant to idle for extended periods of time. As long as you didnt say something along the lines of 10-15psi at hot idle. Then I would worried.

 

Around 4-5 years go. Learned my lesson and it's just not worth it to me to even think about trying it again. Also....I had it wrong. It was four camshafts and not three. Everything from a 236/242 up to a 253/264 with .680 lift.

One of the cams was a 246/252 and sold it to a buddy. He also had similiar problems.

Again, don't have a clue in the world what was going on but haven't had problem one since changing over to hydraulic and making more power than ever. Still say it was bad Karma.

 

Damn, that sucks.

I keep the idle set a little higher to keep the oil pressure up. I have a stock oil pump and spring. I have my idle set at 1,100 RPM. So far so good.

 

Low pressure with the stock setup(stock pump/pan/etc)?
With my Canton pan and pump, I never have less than 25 psi even after running the motor hard in the summer. I know that some solid roller guys like Musser and Trigg mentioned that extended idle periods seemed detrimental but I'm not sure of their setups at the time or even if they were talking about themselves. My fully warmed M6 is set to idle at 1,000 rpm via LT1 Edit and I have installed the Crane Bronze cam to oil pump drive gear. One of the Houston Fbuds went into an engine builders shop and found a lot of chewed up stock gears (the one that is driven by the cam and spins the oil pump driveshaft) from Solid roller LT1's.

 

So what your saying that the stock oem drive gear is what could have lead to there low oil pressure problem with there setups?.

 

No, not at all. I just added that as an aside for the solid roller inquisitive. I think the gist of what people refer to in regards to solid rollers and idle oil pressure is that extended periods of idle can lead to accelerated wear on the lifters/aggresive lobe ramps since the oiling is minimal at typical Idle RPM's.

 

exactly....

a lot of the wasted oil pump drives and gears are due to a mismatch in parts. Many SR cam cores use a billet core with a cast gear. You cant use a stock drive gear you must use a Bronze gear with it. Crane I think is the only one who makes a .427 bronze gear.

The cam is only lubed with splash oil. At low idle a SR set up needs more oil than what is normally supplied from splash lube. Raising rpm helps cure this but a street car idling at 2000 rpm is no fun. Thats whay it so hard to get a SR to live on the street.

 

Have you made any kind of modifications to your motor to help make them live on the street?. im thinking valve cover oilers will help out as well as restricters in the lifter valley?.

 

no. first I have to say my motor isnt running yet. Hopefully soon but the addition of a baby boy into the house has put things on a temporary holding pattern I'll get back to work on mine soon. Just have to catch up on some sleep

and my motor is not a street motor. a 355 with a 263/270 .700 lift solid roller is not going to idle well at all, nor will it have good street maners even with hours and hours of tuning. Its a race car now. 2 years in the making on my build up

If I were building a street car I would have built it HR

spring oilers would definately help with the life of the springs. I didnt bother cause my motor should only be running for 10 sec at a time

 

Well.. I've been assembling my 383 Solid Roller since last Wed and it hasn't been fun.
#1. Wed Night - Found the engine builder that built the short block left out the freeze plugs for the lifter galleries (Leaving these out means NO oil pressure on startup) Scrambled around and found some the next day.

#2. Thursday night - found that although block had been properly clearanced for the 383 stroke (3.75), the Canton pan wasn't wide enough. While on the engine stand, put on brand new GM gasket, siliconed the front and rear U shaped sections, bolted on pan, torqued to spec. Spun engine on engine stand right side up, started to install lifters/pushrods and rockers. Spun crank by means of a couple of Harmonic balancer bolts and a prybar. Heard a nice solid "Thunk!" and the crank stopped. I stared at the motor with horror in my eyes. Backed up the crank, then rotated it forward again...."THUNK!". Sighed heavily surmised that it was the crank counterweights bumping the pan. Pulled off pan, examined and found that number 8's counterweight was barely striking the inner edge of the pan. Clearanced it. Put the pan back on. Spun crank, no thunk.

#3. Back to installing the CC 7/16" stud 1.6 ProCom's.. Got 14 of them set on the studs, then found the intake on the now hated cylinder #8 was binding between the 1.550 diameter CamMotions springs and the body of the ProMag's. Crap! Swapped every other rocker onto that stud. Everyone of them bound. So.. out comes the die grinder and I have to remove a crap load of metal from the middle of each and every one of the ProMags to get them to clear the top of the spring on #8. All that took 4 (2 Thursday night, 2 this morning) hours of grinding, cleaning, checking, grinding, cleaning, checking, (repeat till homicidal). Everyone of them ended up with grit in the trunion. I used the air compressor, cleaning fluids and all the determination I could find to get them as clean as detectable. All oiled up and installed, I set the valves at .020 each.

Tomorrow, I'm helping a Houston Fbud pull his wounded LS1 from his '98 TransAm. After that, back to my car and attaching the Flywheel/Clutch/Pressure Plate/Tranny to the motor (I'm installing it all from underneath the car)

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DirtyDaveW

#2. Thursday night - found that although block had been properly clearanced for the 383 stroke (3.75), the Canton pan wasn't wide enough. While on the engine stand, put on brand new GM gasket, siliconed the front and rear U shaped sections, bolted on pan, torqued to spec. Spun engine on engine stand right side up, started to install lifters/pushrods and rockers. Spun crank by means of a couple of Harmonic balancer bolts and a prybar. Heard a nice solid "Thunk!" and the crank stopped. I stared at the motor with horror in my eyes. Backed up the crank, then rotated it forward again...."THUNK!". Sighed heavily surmised that it was the crank counterweights bumping the pan. Pulled off pan, examined and found that number 8's counterweight was barely striking the inner edge of the pan. Clearanced it. Put the pan back on. Spun crank, no thunk.

This is going to be my biggest fear when i go to assemble my motor, I have the same oil pan but im doing a 396 so it will be fun to see if i run into the same issues that you did. What did you do to clearance the pan?

 

Didn't you have some of your setups built by the now defunct DynoTech?