Jayl13

Fired up starboard engine yesterday and heard a faint Tink sound about every 10-20 seconds.
Shut it off (was idling perfectly) and pulled plugs, no water anywhere.
fired up again. Felt valve covers and heard the tink side on the 2,4,6,8 side.
Yanked the valve cover at the ramp in the water and 2 rocker arms fell out into my hand.
pulled boat out of water and back home. Broken welds on the stud girdle, snapped a bolt holding down the stud girdle and upon closer inspection the 2 lifters on Cyl #2 are GONE, not in pieces just GONE. PUlled the push rods and they are perfect, tips are not peened, bent, scuffed nothing. (probably the slight tink sound I heard, push rods moving around in there)
How the hell can 2 lifters disappear from sight? I take a flash light and look down where the push rods are and I see CAM lobes thats it.
how in gods name can 2 lifters discenegrate or vanish into thin air?
Im still in a state of shock on this one. Seen some pretty wacked out things before but this one is the cats azz.
Head scratcher for sure.
Anyone? Ideas?
J

Jayl13

Some photos of the rockers

jmherbert

Did you pull your intake manifold off? I'll bet the house that they are lying in the lifter valley. Without the pushrod holding them down, they got pushed out of their holes.

BY U BOY

Or They Broke In Two And Fell Into The Oil Pan

mopower

Unlikely they would get to the oil pan without doing some major damage along the way. More than likely they're in the lifter gallery.
But my gut feeling is this is only the tip of the iceberg
Good luck Bro.

Bulldog

You should have bout a Fountain with stock power and a chest wig....

If the cam lobes are not gouged to hell the lifters probably are laying around in the valley under your intake.

ratman

when the rockers failed the lifters were pushed out of thier bores and shold be at the rear of the lifter valley, either that or they are in chris angels left front pocket. you should be able to fish them out with a retreival magnet. i think you can buy just the 2 rocker arm assms from jesel, call jc he's a dealer for them. take a good look at the cam lobes (clean em with some brake clean) make sure there is no damage. check you push rods for true by rolling them on a peice of glass, did the rocker arm mounting studs break off in your cylinder head? good luck with it, shoud be an easy fix as long as the cams ok. rm

Jayl13

Its a crane cams Shaft mounted rocker arm assembly. The stud broke in the head which I still have to get back out of the head by the way.
I have to yank the supercharger off and the intake and see if the lifters are just laying in the valley of the block but I have a gut feeling they are broken in pieces and in the pan but hell it would be a nice thing if I just yanked the blower out and there they were. Maybe Ill think about switching this assembly to a non roller lifter setup for more reliability and trash the shaft mounted rocker arms and go with stud mounted roller rocker arms with stud girdles for more strength.
Sorry about earlier its not the stud girdle that broke, its the shaft mounts and the shafts that broke in the rockers that broke.
From a flash light inspection (which means blah nothing) the cam LOOKS fine but only after I get it out of there will I really know whats going on.
Actually I might tear down the engine and yank the cam out inside the boat (its the rear engine that is hosed so I have room to pull the cam out if I can get the balancer off???)
Have to start digging into this thing next weekend and see what progress I can make with it and see how bad it really is.
Thanks guys!
J

nocigarette

i just went through the same thing in my boat like ratman said they are probably in the oil galley toward the back........... i swear by jesel that is the best system on the planet, dont try to due it in the boat, because metal has shot through the motor at least pull it and clean it as best you can, if you have it in your budget buy jesel..............you should be able to see if it wiped the cam when you pull the intake, keep rooling the motor over and check every lobe on the camshaft............it does suck that this happened, i have had my motor out 3 times this year.........even take the oil filter off and cut it in half and see if the metal made it through the motor if you have just metal flakes you might be ok but if the flakes are gold in color you got into the bearing that means mains and possible rod bearings.............puck that sucks i feel for ya let us know..................

ratman

jay the set up you have is superior to stud mounted, it was a freak deal the bolts were probably loose and they worked back and forth til they broke. i really doubt the lifters broke, get a retreival magnet and fish them out of there for starters. snap on makes the best bolt extractor/easy out set. keep us posted.