[torqhead]

Originally Posted by Va68goat

mgarblik,

Man...we have checked for anything that could be causing that noise. We are still going to check some again BUT...how can anyone explain the damage to the distributor bushing, the damaged bearings and damaged piston rings, the block needing a light honing and the crank needing polishing? We've pulled the torque converter back at least 4 different occassions and that wasn't the problem. I was worried about the flex plate because thats the only thing that wasn't new. I bought a new one and sent it to Paul. He balanced it and once again...It wasn't the problem. I was told that it would be difficult to hear this noise from the booth of a dyno room. Thank you for the suggestions. We will recheck everything that could be vibrating, hitting..etc.

torqhead,
All of that makes sense to me but if this motor was just on a dyno a month ago, how could timing be in play? We didn't adjust the timing or the carb. We will definately get the right stud in the carb. Thanks for taking the time for the ideas..now that does actually help!

I think it's Joe, and I'm only trying to add advice to hopefully help. I know you're a novice and hope this will help.

The damage to bearings, crank and also what caused the cylinders to have some light honing work is understandable. It is highly due to the bearing issue on the distributor as well as possibly pre-ignition caused by a spark issue from the distributor and/or setup. I know that covers a lot of bases but damage can occur quickly if you got detonation issues. Detonation will kill any motor, and I mean any motor quickly, it's just plain hard on bearings and if you get micro-millimeter debris in the oil it damages and scuffs crank and cylinders. Debris such as fine metal from that bad bearing gets in the oil and the moving parts rub this oil between them and causes damage. I would assume Paul/Jeff and these guys saw the damage and hence why they decided they needed to make it new again which is good.

I understand you are saying everything is the same, but we are asking or suggesting some things could be different as we don't know all the details. Some questions, and the list can go on... Did the motor ship with the distributor in and not touched from Arizona to you. Were the plug wires all installed, etc. Was none of this touched when you took the motor off the crate or whatever to hook it to the lift and then install it in the car, distributor/spark plug wiring/everything? Was the carburetor removed and reinstalled since it ran on the dyno? There's a lot of little items that could be involved here and why I'm asking as I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that those things had to be installed or potentially changed (unplugged and reconnected) between the last time it was run and now when it's in the car.

The way that motor jerks around, as I pointed out earlier, tells me something is wrong and I would tend to believe it's not mechanical. None of us like to hear or witness the challenges you're going through. Something definitely seems amiss here and I hope as I said previously your new friend from the forum that's going to come help will find the cause. I'm sure it'll be a relief and shocker all at the same time.

[Scott Stoneburg]

I agree with TedRamAir. Get your hands on the motor to feel for the noise. I would get the car in the air enough to get under it. On stands or ramps. A lift would be best. Take all the belts off so there are no external accessories being driven. You wont run it long enough to overheat it. Get under it and put your hands on the pan. Use some sort of stethoscope tool to listen for it.
You running 1.5 rockers or 1.65?

[torqhead]

Catching up... the pickup tube on the oil pump.

I would think on the dyno it probably starved it of oil at the upper RPM range during test. What that does in more of a layman's term is it doesn't feed enough oil through the engine and effectively parts like the crankshaft to the bearings start to heat up and eventually they can damage the parts real bad or cease and "weld" them together for lack of better way to describe it.

My assumption is during the first dyno test, at idle and a bit above idle there probably was oil pressure and no issues on the dyno. The pump is actually submerged in the oil low enough in the oil pan that it shouldn't have had a problem picking up oil. But when the motor was tested and ran up to 5000 RPM or so I'm sure you're getting down to the amount of oil flowing in the engine it may have caused the oil pump to suck in some air. They probably saw the oil pressure drop and hence why they knew what happened and opened it up and said more than a few cuss words. If all of that is the case, it's an awsh!t moment and someone had a bad day! Good thing it was found there!

As said before, just hoping to shed some light on what may have happened but I sure hope the problem can be found before doing any further damage.

[krisr]

Has the timing been checked since you put it back in and ran it? Also Are you running an MSD box by chance or is your distributor a ready to run?

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by krisr

Has the timing been checked since you put it back in and ran it? Also Are you running an MSD box by chance or is your distributor a ready to run?

It's been a long running question by many. Only answer I've seen is that it's how they received the engine from the dyno. It all should really be checked over. It was missed in the beginning of this thread as well and turned out to be the issue.

Like I've said, that noise is very common in many engines I've had here, and it turns out to be engines that don't really like a lot of ignition lead at idle. Whether it's too much initial, or a combination of initial with vacuum advance added, creates a pre ignition knocking noise, mostly heard at idle. Notice in the video you can't here it when it's revved. I came to the conclusion that some engines are just more efficient than others and don't want or need a bunch of initial timing, and this is likely one of those engines. With tight quench, a good cylinder head with an excellent combustion chamber, a bit of compression etc... On the dyno it doesn't matter much, but things change when put into service.

That's why I've mentioned in the beginning of this thread I'd want to know exactly what those numbers are and where they occur. Most likely you'll end up putting the smaller stop bushing in that MSD for more advance so you can back down the initial timing and put the total where it made best power for Paul on the dyno.

[Va68goat]

torqhead,

- Yes the distributor was shipped with it on the motor and we did not touch the distributor at all. (see attached photo)
- Plugs were installed
- The distributor, plug wires...nothing was touched, removed or even bumped when we installed the motor.
- I was told that the motor was dyno'd with this carb. For shipping purposes it was well packaged and boxed separate from the motor. (See attached photo: The photo with the motor and box is actually when we were getting ready for it to be shipped to Arizona. It came back packaged just as we sent it)

** Here is a question that I have that I can come up with an answer. For arguments sake, if the noise we are hearing NOW is the same noise that we heard BEFORE it went back to Arizona but was not heard on the dyno..How can anyone explain the video of the bad distributor bushing and the damage that is said to have occurred? If this is an ignition problem, vacuum problem or even a bad adjustment in the carb...why does the knocking noise sound exactly the same as before but now there's a bad MSD bushing, bearings, piston ring etc? I don't know enough about cars to even make up an answer for that question**

[Va68goat]

krisr,

We did not change the timing at all. I was told to leave the timing as it was shipped and that's what we did. The distributor is an MSD Ready to run. I do not have a box.

Formulajones,

If the timing was set at the dyno and was not adjusted, was not bumped in any way, why wouldn't the motor just crank right up? It just ran on the dyno not even a month ago.

[torqhead]

Originally Posted by Va68goat

torqhead,

- Yes the distributor was shipped with it on the motor and we did not touch the distributor at all. (see attached photo)
- Plugs were installed
- The distributor, plug wires...nothing was touched, removed or even bumped when we installed the motor.
- I was told that the motor was dyno'd with this carb. For shipping purposes it was well packaged and boxed separate from the motor. (See attached photo: The photo with the motor and box is actually when we were getting ready for it to be shipped to Arizona. It came back packaged just as we sent it)

** Here is a question that I have that I can come up with an answer. For arguments sake, if the noise we are hearing NOW is the same noise that we heard BEFORE it went back to Arizona but was not heard on the dyno..How can anyone explain the video of the bad distributor bushing and the damage that is said to have occurred? If this is an ignition problem, vacuum problem or even a bad adjustment in the carb...why does the knocking noise sound exactly the same as before but now there's a bad MSD bushing, bearings, piston ring etc? I don't know enough about cars to even make up an answer for that question**

Good info. There are a number of variables that can affect an engine running in Arizona versus where you're at as well. You're in VA and not sure of your altitude but could have too much initial timing for where you're at. Just guessing at this point. A vacuum leak is plausible as well. Just throwing out ideas and hopefully you didn't take my long winded messages wrong as I was just trying to help you with cause and effect. We're all interested to find out what the h3ll is going on here in hopes it's something that can be solved relatively easily!

[JLMounce]

Lots of things can happen in transit. Don't assume anything, at the very least I would verify the simple things you can do right away. Make sure the plugs are seated properly and that the plug wires order pertains correctly to the proper firing order. Get out your timing light and verify that the timing hasn't been moved, readjust as necessary. If there's anything weird happening, verify the balancer is indexed properly with a piston stop.

Have you checked the coil? I'm assuming the engine was not dynoed with your coil, so that's a part that has likely changed from when it ran on the dyno to now in your car. Anything that is different should be checked and verified.

[Va68goat]

torqhead,

Believe me...I appreciate anyone that is willing to provide their experience and knowledge. Before the motor was sent to me, I had a long conversation with Jeff regarding the elevation of Virginia compared to Arizona. I was kind of laughing because he was mentioning sea level, temperature, humidity and I had no clue how any of that played into a carb. He said he was getting some information from a local airport and that he would adjust the carb to being in Virginia. I appreciate you taking the time to contribute.

One thing to point out that may be important. The knocking noise sounds the same with Jeff Koerners carburetor as it did with the Street Avenger that was on the car before.


JLMounce (Jason),
You make great points. We haven't checked the coil. That's something that Jeff brought up is for us to look at what I'm using now compared to what was not used in the dyno. That's the coil and the fuel pump. We will check out the coil but we did run a mechanics stethoscope on the fuel pump but there was no signature on the fuel pump. If we take the logic of checking what I am using now compared to what was not at the dyno, how could the distributor bushing be that damaged causing damage to the bearings, piston rings? The noise is the same as before.

[Va68goat]

We also eliminated the fuel pump and ran the motor off of the fuel bowls and the knocking noise was present. We also ran the motor briefly without the belts and the knocking noise was present.

[Va68goat]

Can someone answer this?

If the noise we are hearing NOW is the same noise that we heard BEFORE it went back to Arizona but was not heard on the dyno..How can anyone explain the video of the bad distributor bushing and the damage that is said to have occurred? If this is an ignition problem, vacuum problem or even a bad adjustment in the carb...why does the knocking noise sound exactly the same as before but now there's a bad MSD bushing, bearings, piston ring etc? I don't know enough about cars to even make up an answer for that question. The noise is exactly the same with both carburetors as well.

If a distributor bushing has that much play and was identified as the source of the knock that caused all that damage, wouldn't the identical knocking noise be eliminated with replacing the distributor bushing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QOwVaJcQ_Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soh91OYexBM

[Paul E]

You pretty much went through everything on this. Did you change the distributor cap? VERY long shot but could have some tracking inside from past rubbing, small crack (lower humidity in Arizona) or debris??? Just an inexpensive and quick trial?
Good Luck!
Paul

[MarkS57]

Sorry to hear the problem isn't resolved, that's gotta hurt. Just thinking of this, whenever problems arise in a mechanical assembly of any type, look back at the last problem area identified, don't know how many times over my career that has proved to be an invaluable clue. So in this instance, that would be the distributor, correct? What if the distributor bearing damage was not a cause but was damaged by some other issue? What connects to the distributor there- cam, oil pump, rear most cam bearing. Have you tried spinning up the oil pump by itself with a primer tool like this to see if that's where the noise is coming from? You may have done this already, I haven't read the whole thread.

https://butlerperformance.com/i-2445...-bpi-039p.html

BR's,

Mark

[grivera]

Originally Posted by JLMounce

If there's anything weird happening, verify the balancer is indexed properly with a piston stop.

Many good suggestions in your post -however, this is something that I'm sure was done by Paul

Originally Posted by Va68goat

torqhead,

One thing to point out that may be important. The knocking noise sounds the same with Jeff Koerners carburetor as it did with the Street Avenger that was on the car before.

Based on the video alone the sound subsides with RPM. And, I wouldn't rule out an exhaust leak. However, you and Lynn are right there with it so I defer to his on site assessment. Does he also say it sounds the same?


JLMounce (Jason),
You make great points. We haven't checked the coil. That's something that Jeff brought up is for us to look at what I'm using now compared to what was not used in the dyno. That's the coil and the fuel pump. We will check out the coil but we did run a mechanics stethoscope on the fuel pump but there was no signature on the fuel pump. If we take the logic of checking what I am using now compared to what was not at the dyno, how could the distributor bushing be that damaged causing damage to the bearings, piston rings? The noise is the same as before.

Keep in mind different issues could be at play - for example you already found the interference issue with the windage tray early on - that would have caused a noise yet after adding clearance you still had the noise.

Originally Posted by Va68goat

We also eliminated the fuel pump and ran the motor off of the fuel bowls and the knocking noise was present. We also ran the motor briefly without the belts and the knocking noise was present.

As long as the fuel pump is physically attached to the engine it can make noise- even if you block flow.

[Va68goat]

Paul E,

Paul had the distributor in his hands when he discovered the bad bushing. I'm pretty confident he would have noticed a crack but I can check that.

MarkS57,

Paul had the motor apart and I'm assuming since he discovered bad bearings, damaged piston rings, polished the crank and did a light honing of the block, he would have noticed the cam bearing. As for the oil pump. Several months ago when we pulled the motor, we switched out the oil pump and shaft and ran the motor. Same knock was present. We spun the pump by itself and did not hear anything unusual. This was done by another forum member who knows what to look and hear for.

grivera,

Early on I sent pictures to Paul of the windage tray which had the witness marks on it. He originally said the "One Washer" spacing could have caused the witness marks and the knocking noise. He advised to space the windage tray with two washers, which we did and the knocking noise was still present. That's when we worked out a deal for the carburetor. When the motor continued to knock after that, Paul said the witness marks on the windage tray were caused when he hand spun the motor checking for clearance of the windage tray. Of course that's when the deal with the carburetor fell through and I had to pay the difference in order to get my motor back.

[dataway]

Is there a video of the engine running on the dyno without making the noise?

[Va68goat]

dataway,

The only video I have seen was taken from the booth

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Va68goat

torqhead,

-
** Here is a question that I have that I can come up with an answer. For arguments sake, if the noise we are hearing NOW is the same noise that we heard BEFORE it went back to Arizona but was not heard on the dyno..How can anyone explain the video of the bad distributor bushing and the damage that is said to have occurred? If this is an ignition problem, vacuum problem or even a bad adjustment in the carb...why does the knocking noise sound exactly the same as before but now there's a bad MSD bushing, bearings, piston ring etc? I don't know enough about cars to even make up an answer for that question**

Originally Posted by Va68goat

krisr,

We did not change the timing at all. I was told to leave the timing as it was shipped and that's what we did. The distributor is an MSD Ready to run. I do not have a box.

Formulajones,

If the timing was set at the dyno and was not adjusted, was not bumped in any way, why wouldn't the motor just crank right up? It just ran on the dyno not even a month ago.

It's all pretty easy to explain. In Tuscon you're at about 2500 feet elevation. The higher up we go here, the more these engines can use timing. On the dyno the initial setting doesn't matter much because we are just looking for total timing where the engine makes best power. Vacuum advance isn't even used, and idle quality isn't that much of a concern and quite frankly while on the dyno the engine doesn't spend that much time idling anyway in most cases.

So you get the engine back, now you're near sea level, things are going to change a bit. Total timing where the engine made best power will probably be the same but how fast it comes in as well as where you put initial timing is likely going to change a bit when this engine is put in service. Toss in the fact you should also be running a vacuum advance unit, which also isn't used on the dyno, and it's a fairly good bet the engine simply may not want that much initial timing or vacuum advance added. The noise is dead nuts on the same thing I hear here with too much idle timing. It's only ever occurred idling and pretty much goes away with RPM, just as in your case, and never had any detrimental affects with this happening other than it can be annoying to some.

The noise the previous instance also makes sense and several of us have discussed this recently. With the bushing in the distributor eating itself, that shaft is moving all over the place. There is no way it can control timing doing that, so the timing is just everywhere and most likely over advanced in all conditions. Which explains why the rings had moly flaking off, that's typical of an engine with too much timing and detonation while under a load. That was just a fluke instance of an MSD part failure that isn't common, but things happen. Now the noise is back and exactly the same. Not because of a bad distributor bushing, but because there is likely too much idle timing setup in that distributor.. It's easy enough to change around and experiment with. The nice thing about those MSD's is they come complete with a timing chart and various bushings that bolt into the breaker plate to set the initial and total curves where you want them, and I've found those charts to be pretty darn close to accurate. 5 minute fix. If you're running vacuum advance, leave that unplugged for now until that part is dialed in, then slowly bring in some vacuum advance later.

[gtofreek]

I showed Joe's video to another machinist who owned his own machine shop for over 25 years. I suggested nothing, just asked him to watch and see what he thinks the noise might be. As soon as it started knosking, the first words out of his mouth is "that's spark knock". I personally have never heard spark knock at an idle so I asked him to clarify. He said the engine is running too slow to deal with the amount of timing it has and it's causing a spark knock. Spark knock is NOT a machanical knock[which would explain why I found nothing in the engine that would cause a mechanical knock]. It's an ignition knock. This has been suggested many times in this thread but seems to fall on deaf ears.

I pulled the distributor when I got the engine back from dyno. I checked the busing which was fine and I restabbed the distributor BUT had no way of setting the timing. That is why I wrote on a piece of tape on the carb plate that the timing needs to be reset. It was only close enough to get the engine to start and run.

You need to get the idle RPM up and not down at 400-500 RPM. That's just ridiculously slow for an engine with this much cam in it. I only hear the knock at this really low idle. Pick the idle up, set the timing as I wrote on the tape, and disconnect the vacuum advance for the distributor and plug the vacuum port on the carb., then see if the noise is still present. I bet it won't be there.

Tighten up that alternator belt also. It's way too loose.

As far as the windage tray spacing is concerned, I said it before and I'll say it again, the witness marks Joe and his friends saw are the witness marks I made when I first turned the engine over by hand. That is why I shimmed the tray in the first place. The rod bolts were just barely touching which is why the marks were so minimal. THE ROD BOLTS WERE NOT TOUCHING THE WINDAGE TRAY ONCE JOE GOT THE ENGINE! Which is why the noise was still present after they reshimmed it. Don't see why I should have to pay $950 for something that wasn't a problem in the first place. They saw the marks and just assumed they were fresh and causing the noise. I couldn't see the marks clear enough in the pic I was sent, but after seeing the marks in person, they were the same marks I remember making when I first discovered the bolts touching it.

I feel once the timing and idle speed have been dealt with, the knocking noise will be non-existent.