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Original Message
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| solids in a hydraulic block? |
| By Mike McQuesten - 10/01/2001 5:39:10 PM; IP 206.193.0.124 |
Okay FE fans here's one for you. John Saxon and I were looking under the hood of an old '58 Wagon I keep stashed with all the other Fairlanes/Comets/Mercs & Galaxies stashed on the back acre of my little plot-o-earth. This rusted out old hulk of a Country Sedan was assembled in October of '57.It has a 352 "Police Interceptor". The first three months of production for '58, all 352/332s came factory equipped with Shell solid lifters and the weakest sister cam you can imagine. I don't believe this engine has ever had the heads off. The little locking tabs are still in place on the ex. manifold bolts even. And they're locked on very well. But I have taken off the intake just to see what I can find. Also has the machined combustion chamber heads too. I've pulled out all the original shell lifters and little parts, i.e, pathetic 5/16" X 10.6" pushrods.
So here's our question and it's no test, we really would like to know why this block looks like a hyddraulic block? We speculate that the early FEs o '58 may have been cast ready to run with hydraulics but for some odd reason...the hydraulic cam/lifter/rockers weren't ready?? The oil hole is drilled in the lifter bores. The holes are there in the main gallery line and plugged but I haven't removed the top plugs yet to see whether the lower ones might be plugged. Could it be possible that Ford chose to run the Shell lifters to block unnecessary oil flow in these early blocks?
If that were the case, wouldn't running shell solid lifters, with the right cam of course, be the way to convert a hydraulic engine to a solid lifters & cam? The dumbbell solids would let the oil flow which is of course a real waste of oil flow.
By the way, I did run a 428 CJ with a Schneider solid lifter cam and dumbbell solid lifters. I'd run a couple of cams that I didn't like so went with the solid stick for a couple of years before switching back to hydraulics/cam. I know it's not the smartest thing to do but I had no problems. It would rev to 6,500 but it was useless since it was done around 6,000 so that's where I kept my shift points.
So our point is....are shell solids the way to go with a hydraulic block that you don't want to pull and drill and tap for plugs? |
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