LA 318 Valvetrain Question

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I see that now. Bastards...

I could put strychnine in the guacamole...

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I could go for some guac now that you mention it.. (no poison in mine though)


Hopefully you can get it sorted out and glad you caught it when you did. As I said though..would make me a little worried about the other work they did as well.

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this way is the correct way..good you found it.

did they get the notch on shaft correct end on the head left to right?

should be to rear on pass side and to front on driver side of engine for correct oiling to rockers.

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Nope, they've got the rods backwards too!

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now lets double check to make sure I got that right on the shafts front/back left/right.

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And like I mentioned...wonder what else they might have not got right while assembling it.

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I did not want to say it but I could not sleep at night ifin was mine.

?s like did they really put what I paid for in there? or what else did the chebby guys goof?

and why am I fixing it after I just happen to notice it was wrong.

It would have to be in person before I corrected it.

would most likely be one of those IN PERSON punch in the nose/no warranty deals for me for 1400$

cut the loss and roll the dice as is.

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So I just had my LA318 rebuilt and I put it back in the truck (89 Dodge D-150), pulled the passenger side valve cover off because I was going to prime the oil pump and watch to see oil flowing up to the heads.

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It's easy to pi$$ and moan about subpar work. But, you did take everything apart and let them decide how it went together.

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And once again I say to you stop living in the land of "should".

R.

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unscrew the oil psi sender at the top rear of the block & insert a welding rod straight down & see if the cup is in place (iirc 7&1/4" is correct) but hillbilly visual if the rod goes all the way down to the cap then it was not installed (pan/pump/#5 cap must come back off )

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this is something even a good shop/mechanic can miss on a rebuild.

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oil goes straight up vertical from the pump/#5 cap to the sender tapped hole & that is a blind dead end used for the sender to check psi. Further down is a 90 deg turn to the pass side horizontle oil gallery & below that there are 2 horizontle passages out to the filter boss. The cup gets driven up up thru the block #5 bearing saddle into that vertical passage till it is halfway between the 2 horizontle passages so the oil is forced to turn & go out horizontle to the filter then returns in the upper horizontle passage to the vertical passage above the plug & goes up further vertically to the right hand turn into the horizontle main gallery (the sender is a dead end so it has to turn below the sender). If it ain't there oil will not be filtered (it'll go straight from the pump to the horizontle gallery) & the eng will run fine but will in effect get NO filtering and when it reaches it's early demise years later & it will be way out of warranty & a person might not ever be aware of what the problem is (& think he did good maintenence with regular filter changes) unless he cuts one open (& maybe not even with that) & few do that.

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. I checked that and it passes. But it looks like some of the valve spring retainers are upsidedown.

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. I checked that and it passes. But it looks like some of the valve spring retainers are upsidedown.

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(1) that's good to hear (2) they ain't upside down but might be rotator type retainers (what is the installed height?) since they are on the exhausts

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It's easy to pi$$ and moan about subpar work. But, you did take everything apart and let them decide how it went together.

There are questions about rocker orientation and rocker shaft placement on this board all the time. By that I mean others who are doing it themselves sometimes can't remember how it goes together.

And there's no need to slag the shop, $1400 is quite a reasonable price with the engine overhauled and even run in.
No harm was done during the short time the engine ran with rockers misplaced.

So I say, take some ownership of the engine. Pull the rocker shafts, it takes less than 5 minutes to do both sides. Put the shafts in the right orientation, driver side notch forward and down, pass side notch near the firewall and down. Put the rocker arms on in the correct order. Reinstall the rocker shafts with a torque wrench, I believe it's something like 20 lb-ft. DO make sure all the pushrods are in their correct rocker arm and not sticking off to the side. Reinstall valve covers and drive it.

If you have removed the distributor and I can't figure out why that would have happened, reinstall it per RR's method. I guess that comes between the valve covers and the "drive it" part.

We do not live in a perfect world and it'll take you less time to put things right than it'll take to either go to court or run it back to the shop.

About whether they did something else wrong, there's no reason to infer they did based on the rockers and shafts. I'm sure 99% of their work is stud-mounted rocker arms, a shaft-mounted rocker is an area in which they have little experience. Everything else is generic to all engines, except maybe the distributor shaft bushing.

Try to take that word "should" out of your vocabulary. You'll live longer that way.

R.

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while I would do this too, the MAIN problem with your advice is that the shop/mechanic doesn't learn from his mistake and is likely to repeat it on another mopar. Not good.

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