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Update on my fleet of cars.
simply overrevving will bend pushrods- on a 400C 2V anyway...when they bent It still ran but sounded horrible.
long story-bent 5 one night hoping to blow it up so mom and dad would let me put the 429 in from my first car(16/429- yep took three weeks to wreck that screwing around)...instead dad helped me fix it...'fix' was pull the pushrods, hammer relatively straight, drop them back in- one bent so bad it wore a hole in the side of it- we slipped a piece of tubing over it to help hold it straight...sheesh. it was a 75 dollar LTD I drove for almost 2 years in high school- cheapest most reliable car I ever had...only put oil in it when it would lock up from running dry, but the darn 400 just wouldnt stay dead- but talk about smoke! I burned 2 qts a week just going to school, but had great power and ran smooth as silk. in 2 years put a control arm(20 bucks- previous owner had bent real bad- why he sold it so cheep) and gas/oil in it, and it still looked pretty decent. always amazed me how much abuse the poor 400 would take...
once I realized blowing it up probably still wouldnt get me permission to swap motors, I took it a little easier on it, but that motor would float valves at maybe 4~4500 rpm...hitting passing gear meant likely bent pushrods again. a buddy felt how soft the valvesprings were and said it had probably been overheated and took the temper from the springs- never heard of that, but I definitely had overheated that sucker a few times, and you could push the valves open with just heavy thumb pressure- still wonder why a retainer never popped out. didnt keep count, but know at least half a dozen times had to pull covers to pound a pushrod (or 5) back straight.
you know, the old 400 didnt rev too well with the 2 barrel, but that thing felt almost as strong as the old high compression 429 4v around town in that tank- probably an excellent truck motor for towing and such- the 4" stroke gave it a lot of bottom end for sure.
just out of highschool, had a 396 chevy(sorry) in my 81 dodge(sorry again) pickup- that was also a good pulling motor, but I had a big cam/stock springs- luckily it never ate a valve, but on a bbc the weak point in floating valves appeared to be the spherical rocker arm fulcrum-popped the bottoms out of quite a few of those... put a set of harland sharp rollers in, never broke anything else- but ten years later when I decided to pull the motor/get rid of the truck, I took it apart and apparently the valves had still floated a few times- found a bunch of those expensive rockers had cracks in the little steel pushrod (non-replaceable) inserts- yep- I shoulda put bigger springs in... sorry for wandering so far off topic again...
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Today
