It lives! Fired it up again last night with valve covers off and rockers "floating" where it ran good the night before. I noted a couple of them "ticking" and snugged them up a little. Basically it was a process of letting the car idle, snugging down the rocker assemblies (5 10mm nuts on each side) until the idle started to stumble...i.e. holding valves open a little. I'd give the engine a little stab on the throttle and it would clean up. Do again, same results until I had both racks completely down. Shut the engine off (Making an oily mess everywhere), torqued down rocker assemblies per spec and sequence....VROOM! Fired right back up and sounded as always.

Well, now back to the original issue, the intake gasket water leak which started this whole mess for me. Looks good. Filled the cooling system when I was doing the rocker thing of course. Put things back together and drove it around last night. Not much, probably about 30 minutes of run time. Checking oil, water and so on. Seems good! Good oil pressure, good water temps, heater works, runs great like it always has. This weekend I'll spend more time cleaning up the engine bay of my oily mess and giving the car a nice bath. Deserves it. :)

Thanks again for the help Stealth. Good resource!
-Dan

Oh yeah, I don't know if there were actually any of the little aluminum flakes in there. I couldn't ever see any. But rest assured, I'll be changing the oil and filter again this weekend after a little more run time.

adjust hydraulic lifters
 

i couldnt remember how to adjust hydraulic lifters .. so i look t up ...
these are the two methods .. i remembered doing the 1st method long ago.

of course, I'm sure you know that the lifters must work well to do the job.
any issues or contamination WILL float the valves and that can be another can of worms at 5,000+ rpm .. the one reason a lot of high performance engines dont use them - the floating valves & perforated pistons.

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1. To adjust hydraulic lifters with the engine off, turn the crankshaft until the lifter is on the camshaft base circle (not the lobe). The valve must be fully closed. Loosen the adjusting nut until you can wiggle the pushrod up and down. Then slowly tighten the rocker until all play is out of the valve train (cannot wiggle pushrod). Repeat the adjusting procedure on the other rockers.



2. To adjust hydraulic lifters with the engine running, install a special oil shroud or some other device for catching oil spray off the rocker. Start and run the engine until it reaches operating temperature. Tighten all rockers until they are quiet. One at a time, loosen a rocker until it clatters. Then tighten the rocker slowly until it quiets down. This is zero valve lash.

Just an FYI - There is no adjustment on the 4.5 or 4.9's according to the books. The rocker arm assembly holder thingy gets torqued to 35ftlbs and the rocker bolts themselves to the holder assembly in a vise to 22ftlbs before they are put on the engine. I double checked a couple of books on this one. No shiming, no letting the assembly "float" etc.

I think 99% of the rest of the hydrolic engines use the above procedures which is what I am use to. The only reason I had to run the car while tightening the bolts (Not adjusting) was so I could get eveything to sit 100% seated on thier respective perches.

I'm pretty excited to get home and hoping it fires back up clean like it did last night. Warm it up and change that oil one more time.

if one whips oil, you get oil, no change
if one whips eggs, you get fluffy airy fluid egg mix
but
if one whips oil and eggs, you get mayo .. tick stiff non-fluid mayo.

I guess if you whip oil, water, and glycol and you het it, you get mayo like stuff ...


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