I was gone all week and getting back into it. Pulled the passenger side head this morning. Took the rocker arm assembly apart and it all looks brand new. Oil passages are clear. Only thing I noticed that the mounting bolt at cylinder 8 just had a little oil on the shaft whereas the other 3 seemed to have a lot more.

Just like the spark plug picture in a previous post, lots of carbon on the domes of the head for cylinders 2 and 4. 6 & 8 a lot cleaner (as were the plugs) although #8 exhaust valve face show some rainbow effects of too much heat (I would guess). Wonder if that correlates with my perception of less oil on the corresponding rocker arm shaft attach bolt.

Piston faces are similar with 2 and 4 having oily residue on them. Comes off with finger and is very black. Very slight evidence of piston skirt slap too.

After I first ran the engine for a while with break in oil, I did pull plug 4 and it looked fine. Toward the end of my time running the engine, I was playing with carb mixture ratio trying to get it to run well so I'm not surprised I don't have optimal yet. I can see that contributing to carbon on plugs and dome, but why would this only occur on 2 & 4 while 6 & 8 are clean? (unless there is oil getting past rings on 2 & 4 but didn't see any bluish smoke in the exhaust, not oil consumption.

Another question: why do the head gasket holes not mirror the holes in the head and block? The head gaskets I used are the metallic ones from Max and matched the old one in it. I just bought new ones from Max with the same hole pattern. (except there are raised areas around the coolant passages for better sealing.) The current head gasket I used is shown in these photos along with the new (looks like NOS) one. The copper color on the head is Copper Coat residue.

Question Summary:
1. Why would cylinders 2 & 4 be black whereas 6 & 8 look clean with no evidence of burning oil or smoky exhaust?
2. Does #8 exhaust valve rainbow provide evidence of getting too hot?
2. Are these the right head gaskets and if so, what is the logic of the holes not matching exactly to passages in head/block?

Next steps:
1. I'm going to remove valves from this head and see what's going on there
2. Pull piston #2 and see if any evidence of problems and get a better feel for any piston slap.
3. Pull oil pump and start making sure oil path is clean throughout. (new pump inlet screen purchased)


thanks for reading and as always, I appreciate any advice you may have.

-Bob

(note: this thread started with my trying to find the source of hollow metal noise that corresponds to camshaft rotation speed. It's not the"diesel-like' noise I would attribute to piston slap, plus that would be at crank speed. Since the finding of a paper towel in my oil pan, I'm more focused now on getting the engine cleaned out and seeing if any damage was done with the reduced oil flow that must have resulted. I still had good oil pressure and noticeable oiling of rocker arm areas during all of this. )

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Yes, I do realize that I am an idiot. Before I installed mechanical fuel pump, i put a paper towel in the opening to keep crap from falling inside. I must have forgotten to pull it out.

So good thing I have this hollow knock sound that I have been chasing as it led me to pull the pan and find this mess now.

Pulled rod bearing caps 1,2,4. Pics attached. Some slight wear evident but I would think there is an initial break in with new bearings and machined journal and this would be okay. Seem like plenty of oil everywhere.

I mentioned in a previous post a little evidence of vertical scuffing in a couple of the cylinders and some wear evident on those piston skirts. Probably doesnt sound normal,??


I have seen no evidence of paper anywhere but in the pan and all over the inlet screen. Without a doubt, some of the paper towel must have 'extruded' itself through the screen in tiny bits.
Next step is to pull the heads. Those are easy enough to clean up and I am curious if there is any debris in the ports between the block and heads. I'll pull the rocker arm assemblies apart and give them (arm, rockers themselves etc) a good cleaning.

I don't know what dissolves paper towel, so I'm thinking I'll buy a new inlet screen for the Old high vol pump as I won't be able to get all the paper out of the screen. I assume I can buy those separately from the pump?

1 step forward, huge few steps back! But I'll get there.

Since I got this think mostly apart, I see that Jack has an updated cam retainer plate for sale. My understanding is that the mod allows more oil to flow past it. With the Old high volume mod (and no paper towel...) would that plate still be worthwhile? Again, there seems to be plenty of oil everywhere in this engine.

But I still can't figure out where this cam-speed noise is coming from. Maybe pulling the heads will help.

Thanks to all for reading and esp to those that are replying. Your willingness to share and your advice is crucial to me getting this back on the road. BTW, if anyone wants to hear an audio recording of this elusive sound (small file size), PM me your email address.

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Howdy,
Been busy the last couple of days and looking for some advice on next steps.

I pulled the oil pan (after cutting exhaust pipe, moving steering cyl out of the way, etc). Evidence of an oil leak at the rear end. Not sure how to tell if it is a rear seal or leaking at the oil pan. (see 1st pic)

Shocked to see that there are remnants of a paper towl in the oil pump inlet screen and in the pan. (see 2nd and 3rd pic). I did see a little piece of paper towel when I removed the mechanical fuel pump too.

Did a search all around with the pan off and didn't see anything unusual. Seemed to be a good amount of oil everywhere. A couple of the cylinders do have some vertical wear from I would guess the piston skirt? Doesn't seem like there should be noticeable wear like that , esp so soon after a rebuild. Any thoughts on how normal this could be? (see pic 4, helps to zoom in)

Any suggestions as to what I should be looking for? No signs of interference or anything that would cause this noise that I am searching for.... I had my son rotate the engine while I was under there and nothing seemed to be hitting something it shouldn't

I pulled the timing chain cover too. I went to autozone to borrow a harmonic damper puller. But after I removed the damper bolt, I just pulled on the damper and it came right off! Should I expect that since I have so little time on the engine since rebuild (probably 1-1.5hrs)??????

Timing cover had no gasket. But each timing cover mounting bolt had evidence of black RTV on it, esp at the tip. See pic 5. It looked fine to me. There was a little paper towel wedged into a couple of the valleys.
But aside from the damper coming off so easily, it all looks good.


Where to go next?????????

-Pulled the tappet cover, all rocker arms and lifters seem to turn and look good.
-Luckily found the paper towel screw up, but hard to believe that is causing this metallic noise. (i likely left that where the fuel pump attaches to timing chain cover when I was painting)
-No obvious problems looking at crank and associated piston chain except that vertical wear in a couple of cylinders.
-I did not use the stock oil baffles installed in the heads. Instead I had positive valve seals installed on intakes valves. AND I also put umbrella seals on the exhausts. Figured without the baffles and the Olds high volume oil pump mod, it wouldn't hurt to put umbrella seals on exhaust. (?)
-But since the noise I hear coincides with the timing light and doesn't start until about 1 min after cold starts, I am wondering if it could be valve related? No indication of that with mechanics stethoscope, but I don't see any indication of a problem anywhere.

Hoping smart people out there will have some suggestion as to what to look at next? I don't know what else to do.

Also what gaskets should I consider safe to reuse?
-Intake manifold
-Exhaust manifold
-Exhaust pipe to manifold
-No timing chain gasket evident
-Front seal on timing chain cover
-oil pan

Thanks for reading this.
-Bob

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Progress Report:

I pulled off the valve tappet cover to look inside. Nothing surprising in there, good oil coverage throughout. The pushrods and the lifters could be turned unless the lifter was on the lobe of the cam. By rotating the engine, I was able to twist each rod and lifter easily at some point.

Pulled the plugs and was surprised to see that the front 4 (1-4) were noticeably black whereas the aft 4 (5-8) seemed to look normal in color. The last run I did was starting and keeping at idle speed. So it was running rough and at ~400rpm but I wanted to see when that noise showed up and the initial higher rpms with the choke makes it hard to tell. There was no noise initially, and after about a minute I started to hear it clearly. Any other reason why those plugs would be so black?

Next step is to pull the oil plan. I do have the stock dual exhaust, but looks like I need to remove at least the driver's side exhaust pipe to pull that pan and that is not proving to be easy.
More to come.

thx
Bob

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Could your dizzy clamp have loosened and the dizzy turned while driving and screwed up timing?

What is your concern about the Melling shaft between the dizzy and the oil pump coming out? On mine, if it comes up with the dizzy, I just drop it back in then engage it with the dizzy and turn rotor until it drops in place. Maybe we have different setups.

Hope it is something minor..

I took a mechanics stethoscope and probed around the heads and timing chain to find a noise that would correspond to camshaft speed. No luck. So I kept going to the block with no luck. When I crawled under the car and probed the oil pan I heard the noise thru the stethoscope.

It was up front near cylinder 2 (or maybe 1) area. I felt the pan with my hand and did not feel any impact or interference. Maybe the front bearing is not getting lubed right? But not sure why the noise would correspond to camshaft speed vs twice as fast crank frequency. Thinking I need to drop the oil pan, but that damn driver side exhaust pipe is in the way. I'm not sure how to remove it without cutting it and then I would not be able to put it back together in my garage.

Any suggestions on next step and how to remove that exhaust pipe easily?

thx
Bob

A few more bits from today's troubleshooting:

The frequency of the noise coincides with the light pulse on my timing light. I removed the engine oil dipstick and the mechanical fuel pump and noise was still there (used the electric pump I installed to power car). Also, the noise is not evident when I start the engine cold. It starts to appear after 30 sec - 1 min as the engine warms. Noise seems to fade as rpm is increased from 450rpm @ idle to higher, but returns noticeably as return to idle (I attribute to the engine noise drowning out this other noise). When I put my hand on the deep end of the oil pan, I believe that I can feel something when I hear the noise, but it is a subtle difference.

Going to try to focus my efforts to pinpoint the source of the noise before tearing into the timing chain cover etc.

-Bob

I've been playing around a little more with the engine, trying to get a smooth idle etc. Along with that, I did a comparison of oil pressure from my OTC gauge (plumbed with the existing oil pressure sender) against the dash gauge.

The reason I get spooked is that at idle (~500rpm) the dash gauge barely reads above L. The OTC gauge shows about ~30psi there which seems like that is plenty at idle.

Is this normal for your car?


Separately, there is this metallic almost hollow knocking sound that occurs at the crankshaft speed. It speeds up and becomes less noticeable as rpm is increased and most pronounced when rpms are reduced to idle. (Oil is at F, and good pressure). The sound seems to be coming from inside the engine as I can hear it more clearly through the oil fill tube when I take the breather cap off. I have an audio recording of it which I can send but that file type won't upload here. I seem to remember it being there before I had the engine rebuilt. Any thoughts?

thanks again for reading and all your comments.

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Here is some more info.

After being gone a week, I started it up again to warm the engine then drained the break in oil. Also drained the water in the radiator and filled with ~50:50. To see what was in the oil, I drained it through a white t-shirt and you can see what was left. Nothing really solid, almost graphite like in texture. Fished around in the old oil with a magnet and nothing significant was there. Also stuck the rod with a magnet on it inside the oil pan with similar results.

Filled with 5 qts of Rotella T4 15W-40 and for kicks took off the rocker arm covers to check them out. Oil was evident throughout but I was shocked to find a valve keeper laying in the passenger rocker arm! During assembly I realized that I somehow lost one so I bought some more and replace some of them with the new ones. I checked carefully and every valve still has 2 keepers, so somehow the lost keeper was 'lost' inside the spring and worked its way out.....

Started it back up with an OTC brand oil gauge Tee-d to the existing pressure sender unit. Engine runs great. Oil never got close to L and temp was solid.

Here are some oil pressure vs rpm measurements:

RPM Oil Press - psi
450 30
700 50
900 50
1000 57
1500 62
2000 68
2500 72
3000 78

Gauge on dash looks good to at low rpm so I feel good that this is working properly.

One lingering problem is the transmission. Recall that the driveshaft is removed. When I started it today, there was the metallic gear 'meshing' sound. I moved the shifter from Park to Neutral and it got a little quieter. When I moved it to any other gears (D, L, R) there was no objectionable sound. As I came back to N, it started again. It sounds just like a standard transmission car when trying to get it in gear when the engine is not quite at the right speed for the clutch engagement. Sort of repetitive teeth to teeth hitting sound. I very slowly moved from D to N and the sound went away and was gone from N to P.

Any thoughts on this? the car hasn't been driven in 2 years. My next plan is to connect the driveshaft and take the car around the block but don't want to do any damage if there is something I need to do first with the Ultramatic

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THanks for the comments so far. I'm sure there will be more to come (hopefully). In the meantime, I will crank it up this weekend with an external oil pressure gauge to better track pressure and pressure vs rpm.

When I put the new lifters in, they seem to slide in easily and had the ability to rotate. Not sure about how to easily check an missing oil gallery plug?

From James' comments, I should drain the break in oil, check it out, and then fill will regular oil (i was thinking of using Rotella).


I'll report back this weekend.

thx
-Bob