Hey everybody, I'm putting together a 351W and pulled the crank, cam, heads, and push rods out of a 95 engine for my older block so I could have a roller cam and now the push rods seem looser than they should be. I talked to Ford Racing and the guy there swore that the blocks are identical so how the heck is it possible that the push rods would seem too short? This guy told me that they'd tighten up after I got some oil pressure in there and maybe I'm just used to old-school engines but it's hard to imagine that it would make that much of a difference. Anybody have any experience with this?
Thanks,
Brian

 

Are you saying that you are using the lifters out of a roller block in a non roller block?

 

Right, I pulled the crank, cam, lifters, pushrods, and heads off of a roller engine and have them a block from a non-roller.

 

you cant run typical roller lifters in a non roller block unless they are link bar, or if you have the block machined for the lifter spyder

 

Thats not going to work. You would have to run a reduced base circle cam and drill and tap the lifter valley for the spyder to make it happen. Link bar lifters are a better solution. Thoses heads and cam are not performance pieces either.

 

Hmmm I must have a roller-capable block then because the spyder went in without any modification. The guy I bought it from swore it was from a '93 but it's possible that's he's on drugs and it's really off of a '94. Or maybe he's sober and the late '93s were rollers.

At any rate, I guess that means I have the correct block but that still leaves me wondering what would cause the pushrods to seem short. Maybe bleed-down is really all it is

 

Have you used a push rod length checker to see the exact size you need?
I cant even believe you got roller lifters, and the supporting parts to work in a non roller block. Weird

 

whats the block code? F4TE are roller blocks, everything else is flat tappet.

 

Well the engine is in and running and there doesn't seem to be any ticking coming from under the hood so they must have tightened up after they got some oil pressure in them.

BUT, now I'm intermitantly getting zero compression on a couple different cylinders and if I loosen up the rockers, the compression shoots back up, so something isn't sitting right in there. Anybody got any ideas on this one?

 

Sounds like you have to much preload on the rockers causing the valve to stay open. Did you soak or manually fill the lifters berore installation? You should readjust the preload on all of you rockers.