500" Keith Black Stage 3 block and heads with Mopar roller rockers. This is an old race engine that I am de-tuning for street/strip duty.

Oil only goes to the rockers when the cam holes line up, not continuously. Is this enough oil for street duty? The driver's side lines up at 120* and there seems to be a lot of oil for the returns to deal with.

At what crank position does the pass side oil?

What is the bigger concern with this combo? Lack of sufficient oil due to the intermittent flow, or if I groove the cam journal, will the increased flow flood the head?

And, this engine was originally built by Dick Landry Int., and they welded shut the oil hole on the exhaust rockers that points to the intake push rod cups. While priming the system with a drill, there seems to be plenty of oil getting to the cup with out these holes open. But I don't know if this would be true while running.

I hope that the oil flow is satisfactory as is, because I would need to tear down this engine to groove the cam journal.

Any and all experienced opinions on this subject would really be appreciated. Thank you!

If your running a lot of spring pressure the extra oil from grooving the cam will help cool the valve springs a bunch. Years ago Car Craft or Hot Rod did a article on Air Flow Research using a 50 HP electric motor to spin a SB Chevy test mule motor over with no spark plugs and then with no rods or pistons with the crank oil holes block out.(This was when they where under exclusive contract with Jr Johnson Racing)They ended up determing that 80% of the oil temp was generated by the valve springs I groove all of my cams now, hydraulic,solid, hydraulic roller or solid roller, BB, SB or Hemi I do use a crankshaft scraper also to help aid oil control and controling the slinging onto and off of the rotating crankshaft

Controlling spring temp was not an aspect I anticipated. The springs are 225/625.

I guess now I need to know more about grooving the cam. Is that something you do yourself or does the cam need to go to someone?

And is there any real chance of overwhelming the return holes with the extra oil volume and having a lot of oil standing in the heads?

Obviously this is new to me and I appreciate the help.

I take the cams to a machine shop and have them groove it in thier lathe, .030 deeep and the same width as the oil hole . As far as the oil return, if you have bushed rockers(non roller on the shafts) you probally won't have a oil return problem, if there true roller rockers you may have to add a .080 oil restrictor in the oil passages to the rockers I have several wedge motors with Indy heads and thier external oiling with one set of Harland Sharp single shaft roller rockers and the other one has a set of T&D stock type single shaft roller rockers, you absolutely need to restrict the oil flow on them The new World blocks, both wedge and Hemis, have .040 oil restrictors in them from the factory, they oil the rockers full time I have a .039 restrictor in my street 518 C.I. 440-1 Indy heads wedge motor using the Harland Sharp a stock 6 quart 1970-71 street Hemi and .080 restrictor in my 527 C.I. Indy head bracket race motor with a 10 quart Charlies race pan with a kick out Both oil the rockers profusedily(SP) EDIT. I will problally change the street motor restrictors to .035 and the race motor to .039 from the street motor

Cab, you da man!

I checked the cam that came with the engine, it was grooved just about like you said you have yours done, only a little deeper. And then I pulled the new cam. No groove. So it got a groove and now I have oil everywhere.



The rocker shafts are bushed so it looks like I am good to go. I am going to reopen the oiling holes that they had welded up. I don't mean to second guess DLI on this, but they built this thing for racing and may not of needed that much oil at higher RPM.

For the frequent lower RPM that this engine will see with street duty, the extra oil might just be handy.

Cab, thanks again for taking the time to share your experience with me.

Your more than welcome, glad to help