Same thing happened to me last December. I was cruising at a steady 45 mph
when I experienced a sudden loss of power. Limping into work, I could see
no obvious problems upon inspecting the engine. I opened the valve cover
and looked down to see that one of the rocker arms was missing over the
valve spring!! I popped the valve cover off and saw that the rocker arm was
rotate 90 degrees out of the way because the push rod had fallen out from
under the other end of the rocker arm!
I checked the tappet screw on that valve to see if the screw had changed.
It had not. Thank goodness that it was the intake valve that quit working!
(I wonder what would happen to the engine if the intake valve kept working
with the exhaust valve closed?).
Anyway, I determined that that particular push rod was 1/4 inch shorter that
the others, with a noticeable "beaten" look about the upper end. With the
additional clearance on that push rod, I theorize that the tappet end would
sometimes hit the flared section of the push rod enough to wear it down over
time. I screwed down the adjusting screw and drove her home.
What caused this? I'm still not sure.
New push rod, no problem.
-----Original Message-----
From: spitfires-owner@autox.team.net
[mailto:spitfires-owner@autox.team.net]On Behalf Of Bill Gunshannon
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 10:45 AM
To: spitfires@autox.team.net
Subject: Engine problem
Anybody ever see this??
I was on my into work last Monday when I noticed a sudden loss of power
while cruising up I81. I got off quickly and pulled over into a nearby
parking lot and popped the hood. The #2 plugwire, instead of being att-
ached to the plug was pointing straight up int he air!! Not a good
thing. I used a pair of pliers and cobbled it back together. It ran
badly, but I did manage to get it to the parking lot at work. I left
it there for the night and came back the next day with a new set of
plug wires. Installed them and fired it up. The engine sounded like
it was missing badly and had these really loud knock. I popped the
hood again and went through all the possible problems I could think of.
Checked for reversed plug wires checked for a cracked distributor cap.
Found nothing. At this point I decided to ask for help from someone more
experienced than me and brought my brother into it. I feared at this point
that I had dropped a bearing although I couldn't imagine how as the car
had not been making this noise when it was shut off the last time.
After a listen he suggested popping the plugs and taking the valve cover
off. before he even got the plugs out, he spotted the problem. A push
rod had fallen out from under its rocker arm!! Needless to say, this
made the noise and vehavior of the engine crystal clear. The big question
is, how was this possible?? He had to turn the tappet all the way out in
order to get it back into place and after this the car ran perfectly.
I could see this happeneing if the car were being pushed and the valves
started floating due to weak springs, but the list drive before this was
at a very conservative 25-30 MPH beacue of the missing cylender. As one
more note, it was not the same cylender that had the bad p[lug wire and
the dropped pushrod.
Anybody ever see this happen??
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
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