anyone made a 426 Hemi live through Drag Week yet?

[TheEngineWorks.com]

Where has Atwell been?? Wonder why he does not come play at DW anymore, he sure seemed to have a blast beating the shit outta some awfully nice hardware!

[Orange65]

Put a W motor in it- surely u can find a 348 or 409!

[Grumpy]

seeing that car run DW would be worth the price of admission.

Yep, it certainly was!

[Beagle]

We're talking about engines with hemispherical combustion chambers. Not the late model stuff.

that's a relief, because the late model four valve Ford stuff looks suspiciously like half a sphere.

Then again, so does my fifty year old Honda 50cc junk. lol. I did read the title originally though - pretty specific question. After seeing all the valvetrain carnage this year, I'd be worried about that with anything.

[mcat]

x2. The next year he brought the Plymouth Belvedere
and I was lucky enough to make a pass in it. Crazy torque.

me too! one of the top ten coolest things i've done..
how about that throw from 2nd to 3rd... at least 6 feet..

[MR P-BODY]

Buy the BEST rockers out there.... dont let
the price scare you too much.... they are pricey

[A/Fuel]

Rockers don't break all that much, depending on the cam and springs it can eat lifters. Keeping the right ammount of oil under the valve covers is key. Burning up and galling push rod cups and adjusters are probably the weak point. We have oil restrictors under the rocker stands, and finding the right size so as not to flood it but keep it well oiled is what we go for. The high rpm blown guys take oil from the back of the block and feed it to the valve covers. For lower rpms (under 6500) it's not really needed.

[MR P-BODY]

Rockers don't break all that much, depending on the cam and springs it can eat lifters. Keeping the right ammount of oil under the valve covers is key. Burning up and galling push rod cups and adjusters are probably the weak point. We have oil restrictors under the rocker stands, and finding the right size so as not to flood it but keep it well oiled is what we go for. The high rpm blown guys take oil from the back of the block and feed it to the valve covers. For lower rpms (under 6500) it's not really needed.

I've seen plenty of broken hemi rockers... they bought the cheap ones...
if they buy the good ones they dont break... but the good ones are $2000+
and that price scares alot of people... but hell... a hemi COST bucks to build...
I had one and back then we didnt have good parts so you didnt rev them high

[A/Fuel]

Don't get me wrong, they do break. We have to carefully inspect them. The intakes break seem to crack first on the under side of the shaft, and the exhaust crack in the "back bone area" on the top. A lot of the issues we have probably wouln't effect a street car. For instance, changing to a thicker head gasket will leave more of the adjuster hanging out of the bottom of the rocker, a weak point from what I see. So I would guess on a street car you would have the correct length push rods instead of a "universal" size, which would make them more durable. A lot of times there is a cause and effect situation that make the rockers look as if they are to blame when actually it is more of a result of something else. Sometimes it's hard to tell. A broken or missing lash cap for instance can cause a rocker to break.
You are correct on the cost though, at around $2500 for a set of used stage 5's they are expensive, and indiviual rockers can go for around $150.....but then again, breaking an exhaust rocker can cost a whole lot more.

[TheSilverBuick]

The six year plan! That's exactly how life goes!

[squirrel]

i'm glad you brought this thread back to life....

[TheSilverBuick]

lol, old threads should stay archived. I was looking for a picture from 2012 and spotted this.

[Loren]

The thing about a gen II Hemi is, that whole valvetrain is an afterthought added to a motor designed for wedge heads, isn't really that great of a design and needs special attention paid to it to make it live which includes checking every valve, every rocker to see that it's getting oil and nothing's funky (Stage V stainless rockers here). Back when, with zero experience, I had gone to local guy Ches Bushey who was known for making an A/Fuel car run fast and consistent and he said he didn't even run past 6500, he made all his power between 5 and 6,000 and from there he wasn't having valvetrain problems anyhow, 1/4 mile at a time. Experience-wise on a scale of 1-10 I got to a 2, and car sits waiting for a 1,000 mile teardown to see if anything I know is worth a sh*t before using it more, no way would I take a long trip with that thing until I knew for sure, I just don't trust it otherwise. I did the same thing with Cox .049's once, which the Hemi reminds me of. You can't get the thing to run, and then it does and it's amazing, then you wonder about it and take everything apart to have a look inside and repeat process.

(When I hear put-downs about a car that doesn't get driven much I mention putting 150K+ on my SS-396 over twenty years, so save-it.)

[Gateclyve Photographic]

The six year plan! That's exactly how life goes!

For some of us, the six-year fail-to-plan is exactly how life works (cynical revision prompted by disassembling a particular major sub-component over the weekend for the umpteenth time for more grinding and fitting . . . Doh!)

Sometimes want to throw a wrench at the shop TV when one of those big-budget, platoon-staffed pro builders comes on whacking together perfect stuff in a couple of weeks or a month . . . .

[squirrel]

get the tv out of your shop and get the damn thing done!