bwkelley76

actually I can remove a pushrod and look down the hole (better than removing the intake) Still more work than I wanted to do but oh well.

projectresto83

You still can't tell if its a roller or not that way unless you pull the lifter out. The roller part of the lifter is on the bottom at the cam. But still the easiest way to tell if its a roller is what year it is.

bwkelley76

Apparently mine is a 1985 which was a roller-ready block but not all were fitted with roller cams and lifters.

What I'm looking for by removing the pushrod is not the lifter itself. I'm aware that the roller will not be visible. I'll be looking for the support bars and the bracketry (spider) that keeps it all intact. I'll let you all know what I find.

projectresto83

Ahhhh yes the dog bones, I forgot about those. I havn't gotten to work on a roller blcok in awhile so that part totally slipped my mind.

bwkelley76

Well I had an intake manifold gasket leak so I decided to take the intake manifold off and what do I find?

Roller cam and lifters for sure, and a set of 1.7 JBA Gold Anodized aluminum roller rockers as well as dual valve-springs.

BAD THING is they used a stock older style cast-iron distributor gear and it's already worn pretty thin. (Roller cams REQUIRE steel or bronze distributor gear or the roller cam will chew it up FAST) I did some research and I can't just reuse a stock 5.0 distributor gear for my application. I have an MSD Pro Billet distributor and the shaft is slightly narrower. So I had to order the proper gear from Summit Racing for $50.

Other Findings...

The motor looks brand new inside, the intake ports are gasket-matched and the heads are the E-6 high-swirl quench heads (1986 heads have a unique combustion chamber design that is good for fuel quenching and fuel atomizing, however they shroud the intake valve and cause poor high rpm flow as well as detonation in some cases) This thing also has a set of Hi-Po 289 exhaust manifolds which are actually pretty large and flow way better than the stock 289-302 style. Giving that the block is a 1985 and the heads are 1986, I'm thinking the block, heads, and camshaft came out of 1986 EFI Mustang and someone rebuilt it and added a few High-Performance parts to the mix. Seeing what I've seen so far I'm curious what the engine-builder did to the bottom-end internals. I know it has a gear-drive (not my personal preference) and I'm thinking that someone just went "bolt-on" crazy with this thing and bolted up every high-performance part they could, not knowing if it was compatible for the setup. Either way someone dumped a ton of money into this thing and it apparently has a lot of good parts. I'm glad I saved the distributor gear before it went kaput, might have cost me a motor!

projectresto83

Good find

bwkelley76

Thanks, I'm fairly happy, except I'm really thinking about getting rid of the gear-drive next and replacing it with a true double-roller timing chain. This was also a 6-cylinder car originally and they changed it over to a 5-lug. I sure as heck hope they did that right.

I put the new distributor gear on, it was a pain! Had to press the old one off and the new one on, measure position, and drill the gear out for the roll-pin. MSD actually recommends you send it in to them unless you have the equipment and the knowledge to do it yourself. Lucky my neighbor has a shop. So far it runs good but I plan on taking the distributor out after a few weeks and checking for wear. Who knows if the cam gear is worn funny or not, I didn't see any concerns but it's a pain to inspect. Hopefully it's all ok.