216 tappets while running

[Bob McNeill]

I,ve found that the engine ran quieter and didn,t hammer the rockers or bell the valve stem, maybe our fuel is different, as this engine did not perform as well in the UK and France but once back in Aus settled down until it cracked a piston which allowed the little end bush to become loose and gouge the cylinder wall. A 216 engine I bought didn,t have the caps on the valves and to get valves out required valve stems to be ground to fit thru guides.

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Harry

Here is the link to the video of the 235 running with the side cover off http://canadianmilitarypattern.com/R...20003%20--.wmv .

I've got one of 216 which I will have to find. My reason for bothering to make a Lexan cover was I wanted to understand the engine a little better, see if the lifters rotated etc. and also to understand why the side covers leak. With a half an inch of oil standing in the oil gallery the leak cause is evident.

All of this family of inline 6 Chevy have a very high capacity oil pump. In the 216 spray lubrication they don't develop that much pressure but pump a lot of oil.

As to the valve ends getting mushroomed I have never encountered that with or without the covers. When ever replacing valves particularly exhaust I don't use NOS valves instead there is a modern V8 valve which interchanges which gives you a much harder valve using those I have avoided problems with burning valves.

On the subject of burning valves, with the solid lifters be very careful about getting the valve clearance to small in trying to get rid of valve noise. Some of the civilian car manuals list at less Exhaust .013 to .015 and trucks at .018 to .020 one manual I have even says trucks which are not run at high speed or heavy load can be set to .015 if quieter operation is desired.

My experience is that if the valve train is set to the CMP values hot of Exhaust .020 and Intake .010 they make a little noise but if that noise goes away you actually have a problem. It depends a lot how hard you work the engine with the 3 tons it is much more of problem than with the HUPs and C15s. With the bigger trucks the engines really are working hard when you are driving down the high way. Just a little wear on the valve faces and/or the valve seats the clearance goes to "0" and from there to not closing very quickly and with an exhaust valve a burned valve and real loss of power can be just a few miles of driving.

I burn a 3/8" notch in an exhaust valve in 40 miles on the highway. How did I know it was that little of time? Two reasons, first I have a vacuum guage mounted on that truck and it started flicking at idle as the valve died. Second on the way over the truck had its normal power on the way back it lost a lot of power. When I pulled the cover to work on the truck the exhaust valve that was burned was the only one with no clearance. Fortunately it did damage the valve seats so I replaced all of the exhaust valves with the new harden valves and ran that engine for many years before up engining to the 261.

Have they removed the Zinc from the oil sold in Australia? If so that may be another valve train wear problem to keep in mind.

Cheers Phil