Got lucky with the Hemi

That was a close one...,

Spring was weak....... hammered the retainer for a while....... before they finally broke.

That coulda been ugly.

“If it were me”....... it would get all new springs, retainers, locks.

Valve springs with flat coil dampers between dual springs? Those dampers chew up ti retainers, unfortunately. If you like the springs, switch to steel retainers; if you want ti retainers, switch to dual springs without dampers.

Buy a lottery ticket, man !
That's the poster child for "it coulda been a lot worse"...

Well, the outer spring appears to be broken........ so I don’t know if the failure would be damper related.

I think Chips Cuda is a good example of moderation with regards to spring loads and cam lobes when it comes to rollers and street driving...... and being able to get decent service life and still running good ET’s.

I'm really glad you found that before it hurt you, the motor or the car

Whew........that could have been really ugly.

OMG!!!

You've had a lot of bad luck with this engine. I hope things are turning around for you!

Like the old saying,'Id rather be lucky than good'!
Couple weeks ago I backed mine out of the garage and broke a rockerarm idling. They are old factory SS pieces. I even found the lash cap in the rear drain hole.

Better in the driveway than at WOT!! I recently found 4 lifters going south and a broken inner spring.Call it luck...................

WOW ! Close one for sure ! How did you happen to look ?

Mark

What springs and what retainers - is that a lash cap in there? biggest killer of the roller springs on the street is the lack of cooling by oil - its a tough compromise - glad you found it early that would have been real ugly!

It’s not just this engine. He could write a do not do book 📖

Yep, regardless of the root cause of the problem, the end result avoided could have been

That's scary.

Basically true.....lol

Hopefully I can fix this with the head on the engine. I really don't want to pull the head, I guess I will see.

WOW!!! You definitely need to go buy some lottery tickets!
I couldn't be happier w/ the cam Dwayne spec'd for mine.

It must be a bad week for hemis. Mine has an issue, but I think I caught it early before any real damage has been done. I'll know more when I get time to get it apart.

Sorry to hear that Chip I hope the problem is minor.

So, Chip... how many miles & passes do you have on your combination to which Dwayne refers above?

It has around 400 passes on it total. I've freshened it up a couple times w/ new bearings and rings, valvesprings just to be safe even though they pressure checked fine.
The first freshen up in 2008 (original build in 2006) wasn't planned b/c I found something on the oil drain plug which turned out to be the timing chain breaking links. No damage, just replaced the chain.
The 2nd time (2013) was also not planned...found a piece of a spiro-lock on the drain plug. No damage.
This last time (2019) was to change the rings to something nitrous friendly.

Honestly not sure on mileage...guessing 3k or so. It got driven a lot from 2006-2010 before I got married and had 2 kids, lol. Now it's mostly the occasional weekend trip around town and to the dragstrip.

Going to pull both heads.....I think the springs are suspect.....


Going to pull the whole engine.....I hate valley bolts on the Hemi...And for better or for worse, I just listed it for sale. I think I need a change. I am not going to be the guy that blows up the last cast iron block ever made....This one was brand new in the box when I got it, and I would cry if it let go on me....

Engine is out, Heads are off...New springs are here...

Well, the good news is, its just the springs are wrong for this cam....Luckily nothing real bad happened, everything looks really good.....

Back when I switched cams, I didn't even think about it. My bad.....They are right at the edge of bind after looking this cam up and the rocker ratio....This is pretty large cam and when I wore out the old solid cam, I didn't even think about the springs at the time....We had this one laying around holding a door closed...

My plan is to get this back in the car by next week, and put a few street miles on it, and then maybe hit another TNT night....See what she really runs when she is right...Tune up was pretty close, so I think I am within a jet size or two...Never got to play with the timing though.

Well springs are changed. Everything else looked great. Goes back in the car hopefully this weekend.

Everything went back in the car Saturday and even switched to my spare 727 due to the way the fluid looked in my billet drum 727....I wasn't taking any chances.

Took it on its maiden voyage today for a 23 mile round trip to the gas station in our beautiful 85 degree weather....Minus the hood though, and she is running real nice. No leaks anywhere and I also ported the clover leaf out of the 4500 intake....And first thing I notice, it want 1/2 turn less fuel on the idle screws....that's weird. Remove a half pound of material from the intake, and the engine wanting less fuel at idle was not expected.

Shorter dividers = different signals to the carb, correct
Leaner is meaner

I like to keep the idle AFR between 13.5 to 13.8 and it was down to 12.9 and I thought that was odd....I was running an air cleaner, so that may have contributed. Won't know till I put the hood back on. Air cleaner doesn't currently fit with the hood on. I will fix that this winter when I see the fiber glass guy.