Ray Barton 528 failure what to look for, what happened

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Do you have a teenage son?

Sorry to hear your engine is not well.
I'd be very tempted to pull it rather than just pull the pan and check bearings. A clean engine is a happy engine and all that stuff is inside.
I would pull the dist. and check the gear. Brass shavings.....

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Pull the dist. Check the gear. I have had a few customers that the gear would wear. In turn it changes the speed since now the timing is change and with a lower idle the oil psi will drop. Sometimes does bronze gears last forever other times you almost want tpo change them every oil change. If it is the gear, in the future check the timing every so often when it starts to change the gear is wearing.

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I will post pictures after I pull the bearing caps and inspect the bearings.

This is a flat tappet cam and the distributor does not use a bronze sacrificial gear. The distributor gear is what comes stock on an MSD Pro Billet.

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A buddy of mine recently had a K&N oil filter fail immediately after installation on a GM product. He changed the oil, pulled off an AC Delco filter, put on the KN, fired it up and no oil pressure. Tried multiple restarts, nothing. Put the old/used Delco back on, and had instant oil pressure.

Not defending RB in any way, whatever it is, is what it is...but it might be a crappy oil filter

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Sounds like the oil filter is working pretty good since it's full of bearing material.

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I have called Ray Barton. I don't recall saying anything bad about him in my posts. You must be referring to other peoples posts.

I had forgotten about the gear not being on the distributor. Too many years working on Chevy's. I would not expect that gear to be made of bronze since this is not a roller cam, but I could be wrong. If all that metal in the filter came from that gear then there can't be much gear left. There is an awful lot of metal in the filter.

Also there was no difference in oil pressure when I changed oil filters. K&N makes a very good filter, however I could see one plug up quicker than other brands since they trap smaller particles than other brands.

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I agree with everything you said. Sorry about your trouble.

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It is not under the best of circumstances that I write this post. In 2007 I had Ray Barton build me a 528 for my ‘Cuda. To date it has 611 miles on it and no racing. I have changed the oil each year at about 200 mile increments. Recently it appears that I have a case of bearing failure.

About the engine:
It is the usual Ray Barton recipe of 528 cubes on a Mopar brand cast iron block, solid flat tappet cam (280*, 667”), Nascar lifters, Ray Barton rocker arms, aluminum heads, dual quad single plane, etc. It dyno’ed at 702 HP at near 7K RPM. I have it rev limited at 7K RPM as well.

Here are my issues:
Suddenly I lost oil pressure. It would always run about 60 Lbs. and now it is more like 20 Lbs. At about the same time it lost a couple hundred RPM off it’s idle. When I drained the oil it was black and looked like it had way more than 200 miles on it. Former oil changes where clean. There were some fine metal particles on the magnetic oil plug. When I cut the filter open I found a lot of gold colored metal in the pleats. This weekend I will be pulling the pan and bearing caps to see what might have failed.

Does anyone have any suggestions what I should look for besides the obvious bearing damage? Does anyone have any ideas what might have happened and why this failure took place? Does anyone else have experience with Ray Barton engines and their quirks?

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Well, I saved the oil and have let it sit for a day now. Normally if there were any antifreeze in the oil I think you would see a film on the top and there isn’t any.

The exhaust is relatively quiet. However the Ray Barton rocker arms and solid lifters are not. The lifter noise is all I hear under the hood and it sounds the same as it always has. With the exception of low oil pressure and 200 RPM less idle speed you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong.

I can’t believe the cam or lifters are at fault. There are no extra valve train noises and I know what to listen for. There also isn’t any gold colored metal I can think of in the valve train. Additionally these are the costly Nascar lifters.

I will find out this weekend when I can get it to a hoist and get the pan off. I expect to find at least one bad main bearing and crack shaft damage. I just hope one did not seize and spin, then I will be looking for a block too.

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dude pull covers and intake dont run it any more unless you like rods threw the block, most hemi oiling problems are from cam up.cam bearing feed hole twisted,cam fuel pump lobe worn off, inspect rocker tips,ajusters,puchrods,lifters,cam all can tear up when oil shuts off, dont care who makes them and shoot metal everywhere in complete motor,scoring crank/rods,bores,pistons ect..drill prime it with dizzy out to see how and where oil is flowing, if that is all good and flows right, then pull pan, if you pull pan first you can do no testing

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Well, I saved the oil and have let it sit for a day now. Normally if there were any antifreeze in the oil I think you would see a film on the top and there isn’t any.

The exhaust is relatively quiet. However the Ray Barton rocker arms and solid lifters are not. The lifter noise is all I hear under the hood and it sounds the same as it always has. With the exception of low oil pressure and 200 RPM less idle speed you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong.

I can’t believe the cam or lifters are at fault. There are no extra valve train noises and I know what to listen for. There also isn’t any gold colored metal I can think of in the valve train. Additionally these are the costly Nascar lifters.

I will find out this weekend when I can get it to a hoist and get the pan off. I expect to find at least one bad main bearing and crack shaft damage. I just hope one did not seize and spin, then I will be looking for a block too.

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Are you using a synthetic oil? Many of the synthetics will not stick to engine parts after sitting for a long time. It results in dry engine starts.
With all the mechanical load a hemi has up top, I'd expect problems to arise with poor oiling.

I agree with priming the oil with the covers off to see what's going on.

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Why in the world would he say to run it low on oil? It's not SS motor or Comp motor???

I always run more oil than the pan is designed for. 8-9 qts in a 7 qt pan sure as heck isn't gonna hurt anything.

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Why in the world would he say to run it low on oil? It's not SS motor or Comp motor???

I always run more oil than the pan is designed for. 8-9 qts in a 7 qt pan sure as heck isn't gonna hurt anything.

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Running more oil than a pan was designed for will, at the very least, cost some power.

If he is running a street hemi pan with that stroke, without some oil control mods, you could have some windage losses costing some power. If everything is right, there is nothing wrong with running those pans at 6 qt. Plus, hemi's will generally retain more oil on an oil change due to the larger surface area. I don't see a problem there.

MB

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I hear you... But like I said, it's a street motor.
And what was said, buzzing it to 7000 grand it needs plenty of oil.

My blown hemis are way different I know. But...
I started out with 10 Qts with a roots blower then with wipple screw blower(50psi boost)-12qts Then with a PSI blower(60psi) we were forced to go with 18 qts all in the same pan.It spins though to 9800RPM.

I'll bet you he scuffed some bearings from lack of oil.

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The exhaust is relatively quiet. However the Ray Barton rocker arms and solid lifters are not. The lifter noise is all I hear under the hood and it sounds the same as it always has.

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Wondering about the valve lash after reading this, who set the valve lash? Have you checked since this problem popped up? Noisey rocker arms arn't normal, imho.

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If that engine was turning 7,000 RPMs with only 5 quarts of oil in the pan, there's little doubt you exposed the oil pick-up and were sucking air.

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That was my thought.

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If that engine was turning 7,000 RPMs with only 5 quarts of oil in the pan, there's little doubt you exposed the oil pick-up and were sucking air.

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That was my thought.

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No doubt in my mind, that's what spun the main bearings. How can you have spun bearings yet no signs of oil starvation?

7 flat cam lobes?? The valve train was not setup right from the get go either and is not supposed to be loud. Audible yea, loud no.

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since cam failed,wonder if it was broken in w/ light springs? then inners added after? or just slammed together,and shipped? hmmmmm

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I wonder if it was the chicken first then the egg or vice versa (did the cam fail and cause the other damage or did the bearing fail and cause the damage) I think the cam failed and took everything else with it.

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The idle slowed because the cam failed, pick-up is blocked because the screen is full of camshaft, starved pump, boom.

Kevin

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