My car is running a bit toward the low side on vaccuum, which I beleive is what is causing it to run excessively rich after a heads/cam swap. I already checked the valve timing and the opti timing which were both dead on to where they should've been. So I figured the next step would be to try and readjust the valves with less preload. I pulled off the covers and got the engine to cylinder 1 TDC and looked found that all the pushrods on cylinder 1 and the other rockers that could adjusted at this time would all spin freely with the rockers where they were. The same happened when I rotated the engine 360 degrees and tryed to spin all the pushrods on cylinder 6 and the other rockers that could be adjusted.. they all spined freely.

SO, this pretty much suggests that the valves are fully closed and the lifters weren't bottomed out. BUT, say I did want to try and run less preload, how would I go about this, because if you think about it at this point the lifters are NOT completely full of oil and up, they have just bled down to where they need to be at this valve adjustment. So, right now if I were to pull off the set screw and turn the valve to zero lash (where the pushrod no longer spins) I would only be tightening the valves being the the pushrod is spining while the rockers are adjusted. IS THERE A WAY TO BACK THE NUT AND SET SCREW OFF THE ROCKERS AND GET THE LIFTERS TO FILL BACK UP SO THAT I COULD APPROPRIATELY ADJUST THE VALVES?

 

Why don't you set them with your engine running? It's easy to tell when you hit zero lash and you can proceed to set the preload you want with the lifters pumped up.

 

I got polylocs, so finding 0 lash is easy to find. The problem with adjusting them with the engine running is the fact that engine barely runs... it runs to rich that it fouls out all the plugs after every run and about 5 quarts of gasoline blows by the rings in less than 2 minutes of run time and it backfires like all hell as it runs, I had thought for sure that either the distributor or valve timing was off, but apparently they are both dead on from when I just inspected. It also won't idle by itself, you have to try and hold the throttle to where you want it and when it backfires hard, you have to tap the gas to get the rev's back up. No way I could adjust the valves with it running like that..

Any other ways to get the lifters to fill backup once i back the nut up?

 

The motor should run the same from zero lash to a full turn or more at idle. Your problem stems from something else... my guess is the cam is off or not installed properly.

 

well, the cam and crank timing marks match up perfectly.. the crank gear is "keyed" with the woodruff key and the cam gear matches up with the dowel pin so the valve timing should techniquelly be correct.

Only other thing I could think of would be if the cam was degree'd wrong by comp cams.. I'm not sure if the guy I had do the heads/cam install infact degree'd the cam to verify that it was done correctly by comp but I figured I would try and look at just about everything else I can before going to the extreme of actually pulling the cam out of the car to check this.

 

Actually come to think of it when cylinder 1 is at TDC based of the cam and crank timing marks. The pushrods on these cylinders spin (with the rocker arms adjusted):
Intake: 1, 2, 5, 7
Exhaust: 1, 3, 4, 8

Then when the cam and crank timing marks are both at 12 o'clock (cylinder 6 TDC), these pushrods spin (with the rocker arms adjusted):

Intake: 3, 4, 6, 8
Exhaust: 2, 5, 6, 7

Also, when at TDC for cylinder 1 no other pushrods can be spun by hand with the exception of 6's intake valve. When at TDC for cylinder 6 no other pushrods can be spun by hand with the exception of 1's intake valve.

So does this suggest that the cam timing mark is correct (which would mean the valve timing is correct when the dots are lined up) and that the cam was degree'd properly by comp cams?

 

im not saying it isn't possible, but comp cams knows how to make cams. I am pretty sure they have it right. I checked mine a couple days ago, and the most one of the lobes was off was a little over 1 degree. Pretty good for a 250 dollar cam. Spend 1500, however, and it will be dead nuts on. Is your tune crappy???
I had a "cheaper" mail order tune, and mine ran like complete @ss. This time I stepped up to a Jeff Creech tune, we will see what happens in a day or two when she starts emitting unburned hydrocarbons!

 

I had Ion (madwolf) do the tuning through a mail order tune 3 times on 2 different chips already. Ion seems to be pretty confident that it is tuned correctly and I haven't heard to much negative feedback to anything he has done from anyone so I can only assume that it is all correct being that I know nothing about adjust fuel trims and VE tables.. I don't know if tuning could even be realistic reason for the car to run like complete butthole being that the tuning was done for SVO 42# injectors which I ended up swapping out for the stock 22# injectors after seeing how rich it was running with the 42s, but the stock injectors still run rich enough to drop around 5 quarts of gas into the oil pan in less than 2 minutes.. The duty cycle on them reads out to around 20% at 1600 rpms!!

 

if your getting that much gas into the oil maybe you have ring problems........

 

the motor was just refreshed with all new rings, bearings etc.. when I did a compression test the lowest to highest cylinder was around a 6-7% variance (a bit more than I would've liked to see, but well below the maximum allowed variance of 25%) and all the cylinders were over 205 psi (wet cylinders). Although with this much fuel blowing by the rings, I probably will have ring problems pretty soon unless I figure out what it wrong here pretty soon.

 

sounds like you might have washed the cylinders to the point the rings are no longer sealing

 

bad ring would normally mean making bad compression... i'm making good compression... hard to beleive that the rings would be worn out already, all the run time on the motor so far has been the cam break in at 2k rpms and then a few less than a minute runs. I think it also leans out a lot as the revs get higher cuz for some reason the vaccuum increases as you give it more throttle and decreases right as you get off the gas (kindof against how vaccuum normally works)