Martin
Enthusiast
I was out driving yesterday and, after a redline 1-2 shift, I heard a loud clacking coming from the engine. I shut down immediately and went to look for anything obvious like a belt that was shredding or a dent in a valve cover from a pushrod coming out of its cup - but everything looked OK. I started back up, let it idle, and could clearly hear a clacking that sounded like it was happening once every revolution. Since the car seemed to idle OK, I limped it home in high gear - fortunately I was only a mile from home at that point.
When I took one of the valve covers off, it's clear that a couple of exhaust side pushrods are VERY bent.
The car is mostly stock, and has less than 10K on it.
The question is this - in your experience when you've seen bent pushrods, is it likely that there are some really big problems going on internally? For example, is the cam likely toast at that point, or are the valves/pistons damaged? Every time I've seen bent pushrods in the past it's been due to piston-valve contact, and I'm totally perplexed as to how that could happen with this car - it has the stock rockers, and I'm assuming there should be plenty of clearance.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is something that people have seen a bunch of times before with these engines and it's not as bad as my gut is telling me. I was about to go with new Mopar rockers and pushrods anyway, so I'm hopeful that I can just do the swap and everything will be great again - but again my gut tells me that I'm headed for a big repair job here.
Thanks in advance!
Martin
When I took one of the valve covers off, it's clear that a couple of exhaust side pushrods are VERY bent.
The car is mostly stock, and has less than 10K on it.
The question is this - in your experience when you've seen bent pushrods, is it likely that there are some really big problems going on internally? For example, is the cam likely toast at that point, or are the valves/pistons damaged? Every time I've seen bent pushrods in the past it's been due to piston-valve contact, and I'm totally perplexed as to how that could happen with this car - it has the stock rockers, and I'm assuming there should be plenty of clearance.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is something that people have seen a bunch of times before with these engines and it's not as bad as my gut is telling me. I was about to go with new Mopar rockers and pushrods anyway, so I'm hopeful that I can just do the swap and everything will be great again - but again my gut tells me that I'm headed for a big repair job here.
Thanks in advance!
Martin