...and found this today:



Both on #3 cylinder. Not sure what happened. Pulled the intake to get that loose ball out of the lifter valley, no other damage. Checked all the rest of the pushrods, no problems. Put compressed air on the cylinder, no valve leakage.

Couldn't find decently priced replacements locally, getting them overnighted from Summit. Got the intake back on tonight, get the pushrods replaced tomorrow night and get it all back together, hopefully ready for the track when the gate opens Friday morning.

The points part of the racing weekend is Saturday, running 3 classes. Need to maintain my position in one, improve if possible in the other 2.

 

I had a loose rocker take out a couple of pushrods. Maybe thats what happened.

 

Lucky you found the bits, never did find the small parts of the two pushrods I broke lol.

 

Hope it works out, good to see you still have compression so you can hope for the best.

 

The last time I ran the valves, I didn't have to make any adjustments more than a thousandth or so. Most of them I didn't have to touch. I don't remember if #3 was one I did adjust, but the lifter noise yesterday morning was significantly louder than it was the last time I ran it.

A little more background: I had driven the car to a company car show/fund raiser yesterday morning. Tuesday evening, I took the car to the neighborhood wand car wash to clean it up, including some under the hood. I know some water got in the cold air duct, but it's a pretty steep vertical from the opening beside the radiator to the carb, there is a cone filter in the middle of the duct, and I didn't notice anything when I first started the car. I did take it on the freeway to blow dry it, and on the on-ramp it did seem a little lean at about half throttle (it doesn't spend much time at half throttle ).

It was running fine in spite of the louder lifter noise going to the show. It was on the way home, after about 4 miles of 7, that it started making a significantly different noise and was misfiring. I pulled into a mall parking lot, pulled the valve cover, and found the pushrods.

So, my two guesses are: Water in the cylinder (doesn't seem likely); lean detonation (probably more likely).

I had been thinking I'd try bumping the primary jetting a little because of cruise surging, now I am going to do it. The secondaries are fine, and it seems to run well under WOT.

 

I'm glad I use one piece pushrods.

 

For my usage, these are fine. They've been in since 1997, and most of the other ones still look like they've only gone through break-in.

 

Well, it held together. Well enough that I ended up season champ in one class (even though I lost first round - long story there), 2nd in another class that I won, and 3rd in a class in which I went to the semi-finals (7 rounds to win each class). Coupled with two first-round losses in jackpot races on Friday, I was 12-3 for the weekend.