Oil Pressure

Doug, thanks for the input. I'm not sure about oil pressure being an issue, though. Let me give you some comparison data to consider:

On my 510" SOHC that I ran on Drag Week, I used a Pond block, and one of your HV pumps with the standard spring, and no spacer. Oil pressure warm, going down the road at 3000 RPM, was about 55 psi. The Pond block, of course, uses the traditional oiling method for the SOHC, where oil is routed from the #2 and #4 cam bearings to the heads. I'm sure with this setup I was getting less than 55 psi of oil pressure into the oil galleys in the heads, probably only 30-40 psi. After >200 dyno pulls on this engine, 1500 street miles and several passes down the track, I took the motor apart, and found no significant wear on the rocker shafts. And of course I never seized a rocker on the shaft, or saw any transfer of the rocker bushing material to the shaft. Based on my measurements, all the rockers I ran on this engine had .002"+ clearance to the shaft.

The 585" SOHC is another animal completely. It has a Shelby block, which is not conducive to factory oiling, because it does not use the factory sideoiler oiling system. As a result, in order to get oil to the heads I tapped off the main oil galley at the back of the block, and used external lines to feed oil from the main galley directly to the oil galleys in the heads. I also blocked oil to all the lifter galleys in order to make this system work. My thought is that this system would result in less oil pressure drop to the heads, as compared to the stock oiling system. Also, I am using one of your HV pumps, but with a spacer behind the spring. On cold startup I get over 130 psi of oil pressure at 1500 RPM. Once warm the oil pressure is 40 psi below 1000 RPM, and instantly goes over 80 when the engine revs up. It was with this high oil pressure that I saw the rocker arm issues.

Based on this comparison I'm not convinced that the oil pressure has much to do with the problem. Lower oil pressure and looser rocker to shaft clearances gave no trouble with the 510" motor, but higher oil pressure and tighter rocker to shaft clearances caused problems. I think we can probably rule out the higher oil pressure as a cause of the failure on the 585" engine, which leaves rocker to shaft clearances as the likely culprit.

Do you see any problems with this logic? Thanks in advance for any input - Jay

Jay Brown
1968 Shelby GT 500 Convertible, 492" 667 HP FE
1969 R code Mach 1, 490" supercharged FE, 9.35 @ 151.20, 2007 Drag Week Runner Up, Power Adder Big Block
2005 Ford GT, 2006 Drag Week Winner, 12.0 Daily Driver
1969 Ford Galaxie XL, 460 (Ho Hum....)
1964 Ford Galaxie 500, 510" SOHC