2.3 turbo cylinder head

Topic: 2.3 turbo cylinder head (Read 2175 times) previous topic - next topic

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #15 – July 11, 2009, 06:35:13 PM

Am I understanding you correctly, that you plan on replacing some of the "rockers" with ones from your spare motor? Or are you talking about swapping HLA's? HLA swapping is okay, but not the "rockers".

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #16 – July 11, 2009, 06:59:13 PM

well, i suspect the HLA to be bad so I was going to keep the rocker, HLA combo together and swap them out with the Merkur motor. Is that wrong? I would have thought the used ones were broken in together so that's why i was doing it that way.

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #17 – July 11, 2009, 07:17:08 PM

The "rocker", or more correctly, the follower, and the specific cam lobe it was on, break in together. Go swapping them around and you're asking for trouble. Your best chance for success is to get some new followers and some break in paste and use that on your existing merkur cam. While the follower and HLA do have a mating surface, it's not as important as the cam lobe/follower relationship. Frankly, you could just swap out the suspected bad HLA's and see if the noise goes away. I don't see much need to swap the followers.

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #18 – July 11, 2009, 07:55:12 PM

rog,I'll just swap out the HLA then. I'll give it a go tomorrow so fingers crossed that's the problem.

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #19 – July 11, 2009, 08:17:37 PM

Yes if you have additional HLA just try subbing the suspect... When I mentioned swapping them around, I ASSumed you didn't have any on hand...

Hopefully they were standardized from the early years of the 2.3... I had a Pinto with .020 oversize HLAs(why I had to get them from Ford, no one stocked the oversize version)... Guessing they had some tooling issues when finishing the bore for the HLAs, so went oversize rather than sping the head...

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #20 – July 12, 2009, 11:06:30 PM

Me and the car have been playing stump the dummy ALL day and I didnt win.

I r2 one follower, put it back together and no go. I pulled it all back apart and r2 all but the front two followers, re-set the timing and it seems to be a lot better although the noise seems to be coming under boost now. It has an exhaust leak as well, but I didnt think that was part of this problem before. I cant tell where it's coming from as i've re-torqued the exhaust manifold, and it's still there, but I am going to pull the exhaust half of the motor apart tomorrow and see if I can find anything there....i just cannot seem to pinpoint the knock!

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #21 – July 15, 2009, 11:54:43 AM

How can you tell if an HLA is bad...or can you? some of them hav a small amount of lateral movement on the valvestem when the cam lobe is in the up position, but that is all i can see. This thing is getting frustrating.

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #22 – July 15, 2009, 12:54:49 PM

I don't believe you're talking about an HLA here. I think you're refering to the follower, that rides across the HLA and the valve stem, and is acted upon by the cam lobe.
I've always noticed a small amount of side to side play on the valve tip. The follower can get damaged with improper break in. There will be accelerated wear on the cam lobe contact face and on the follower contact face with the cam lobe. If there's enough wear, it'll tick like crazy, like a solid lifter valve train that's in need of a lash adjustment.
Did you inspect them against a new one when you pulled them out? Excessive wear will be quite noticable.

2.3 turbo cylinder head

Reply #23 – July 15, 2009, 01:36:55 PM

that's the thing...the cam and followers are nice and shiny with zero wear. I was thinking an HLA didnt get pumped up or someting. Everything on top seems to be getting oiled OK....man I just dont know what else to look for. As I say, I cant really pinpoint the noise either. I guess the next thing is to pull the head which I was dreading. I think i will check the timing one last time first. The thing with that is the front cover with the timing marks is missing.