Update on my car being towed home...

[tpabayflyer]

I was hoping the crank sensor was bad but it looked fine.... I bought a new one just in case and did not install it as I pulled the drivers side valve cover and noticed the rear cylinder had a very loose rocker arm. It was the second to last from the rear so I can't remember if it was an intake or exhaust but the lifter definately collapsed. There was about 3/8" of play between the rocker and the valve tip. I pulled the intake and found that the retaining wire clip had come out and was laying next to the lifter.
I pulled the lifter out and turned it upside down and the rest of it came out in my hand.

What would cause this to fail????? I did just finish a bunch of upgrades that included the hi volume timing cover and my oil pressure was 70 psi at cold idle and would settle to 35 psi warm with 10w 30 oil........ I guess I should replace all the lifters at this point and the one pushrod in question did take a little abuse at the lifter end so I need to find 1 pushrod. I also got a nice look inside the intake ports and there is a ton of carbon buildup behind the valves that looks terrible. This car has 132K miles on it and I am thinking about pulling the heads for a valve job... does this sound like a good idea?? Should I consider going with the larger size valves (1.77int 1.50ex) at this time?? What brand should I get? manley?? ferea?? Can the existing seats be cut to accept the larger valves or do I need to get new seats? I am pretting handy with the die grinder so I will plan on doing some bowl blending if I take the heads off for sure. What head gasket do I use as I have a TE-44 and plan and getting razors alky kit eventually and want to run about 23psi max??

I also have not determined the cause of the spark failure yet. When I replaced the timing cover, I did not gap the crank sensor as I did not know it needed to be done so maybe it shifted and the sensor is not reading it? The car did run fine for about 100 miles after the new turbo,timing cover etc... The scanmaster showed no fault codes. Thanx in advance for any help. TBF

 

[gofstbuick]

If you're going to do the heads, I have some suggestions. I used SI valves. Sometimes the 1.77 valve gets a little to close and may not fit with your existing seat. You can grind the factory seat to accept the larger valve. Instead of the 1.77 valve, SI also makes a 1.745 intake valve. I had the machine shop do a standard 3-angle valve job and then add a 30 degree cut behind the 45 degree on the face of the valve. This is a suggested procedure from the Buick Power Source Manual. Both intake and exhaust valves have the additional cut, but really only the intake requires the additional cut on the valve face. The machinist also used a combination of 0.050 plus and standard retainers and keepers to bring the spring installed heights to within 0.002 of each other. There are only three 0.015 shims spread throughout the cylinder heads. I used Felpro headgaskets, with TTY headbolts

 

[MoJoe]

pushrods

Bummer about the problems. On to the positive news: I have a set of pushrods, and various other valvetrain parts, leftover after a roller cam conversion. Shoot me an e-mail if interested.

MoJoe_at_mho.com