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Aux. oil feed line to rockers?

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Tabcon

Tabcon

Jedi Warrior
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I've seen this stainless looking aux. oil feed line for the TR4 that runs from the oil gallery to the back of the cylinder head in a few catalogs and I was wondering if this is really necessary. I've always thought that you didn'd want a whole bunch of oil slopping about in the top end of your engine and dripping down on the crank.


I plan on using roller rockers instead of the standard rocker arms and was curious as to whether or not this thing, or a version of it, is really necessary. Is the tap at the back of the head where the fitting goes put there by Triumph for this reason?
 
I think the "tap" at the back was there as concession to machining the gallery.

As for the "overhead oilers"... feh. More trouble than benefit, IMO.
 
Never had one on my TR4 and drove it 4 years as a daily driver with no problem.

Put one on my TR6 when I rebuilt the engine and eventually took it off.

My opinion is that Doc is spot on.

Forgot, I drove a GT6 as a daily driver for several years without one and never had a problem with it either. So in over 150K miles I had no problems without the aux line.
 
I heartily agree. Triumph carefully designed the system to put just enough oil to the rockers. The 'bypass' line feeds way, way too much oil up there, which just causes trouble.

As Doc says, that plug is where the factory drilled the lateral portion of the feed to the rocker pedestal.

However, there is a flaw in the original system. That slow moving, low pressure oil makes a perfect place to drop sludge, which can eventually fill and block the passage through the rocker shaft. It is worth checking occasionally that oil is getting all the way to the front rocker, IMO. If not, clean the passages.

I've never had any sludge problems since switching to Valvoline, but I have seen them on other people's engines.
 
Next time you set your valves,start the engine with the cover off,when the pressure comes up all of the rockers from front to back will have oil welling up and out.If the flow is poor,the ones in front will starve.Then you will put on the aux feed line and like it!!!
MD(mad dog)
 
Tabcon said:
I plan on using roller rockers instead of the standard rocker arms...
Click to expand...

FWIW, on his website, Richard Good recommends the use of the auxiliary oil line when using roller rockers. He told me that 8.5 years ago in regard to using roller rockers and its still on his website now.

In the thread about the 150k mile TR6 engine tear-down... the last 50k miles on that engine was with the auxiliary oil line installed. On the stock engine it gave me zero trouble and did not cause any premature or rapid wear of the bottom end of the engine. When I installed the performance engine in my TR6 I found that the aftermarket valve cover, with no baffle or filter on the breather, sucked a lot more oil mist/vapor out through the unbaffled/filtered breather. The solution for some was to install an oil/air separator. My solution was to re-install a stock valve cover with the baffle and filter. The engine breathes but does not draw the oil mist out anymore.

That has been my experience. However, if I were still using standard rockers, on a fresh (and clean) engine, I would probably leave it off.
 
Had one on my origanal engine. removed it during the restoration under the advice of some very intelligent guys. I did get a lot of oil mist thru the oil cap and on the valve cover.
 
MDCanaday said:
Next time you set your valves,start the engine with the cover off,when the pressure comes up all of the rockers from front to back will have oil welling up and out.If the flow is poor,the ones in front will starve.Then you will put on the aux feed line and like it!!!
Click to expand...
Or you can do as Randall suggests above; clean out the passages and actually rectify the problem. :wink:
 
The head on the TR4, being shorter than the head on a TR6, may not have the problem of oil starvation in the front end. I had a thoroughly clean head, a new higher-performance oil pump and roller rockers. I noticed that there was a distinct lack of oil inside the front tappet and not a whole lot of oil around the front rocker. This supported the theory that the front of a TR6 head tends to starve for oil. The original stock rocker that came off that engine was very gummed up on the front end. On the new engine, I cranked it with the valve cover off and saw a distinct difference in the oil flow to the front of the head. I opted for the auxiliary oil line and never had a problem. That said, I did return to the baffled stock valve cover and also has a large oil cooler with extra oil capacity. I never felt that the auxiliary oil line was anything but a plus, at least on the TR6 head.
 
I pulled my rocker arm apart after 54,000 miles and had no difference in the wear between the front and the rear rockers. I installed an auxiliary line after that with a alloy cover and sucked in 3 qts. of oil per 1,000 miles, so that wasn't a good move. Needless to say, the cover came off and when I rebuilt the engine, so did the line.

On the new engine, when the valves were being adjusted at 800 miles, there was plenty of oil coming up at the front of the rocker assembly, but again, everything was perfectly clean as well as being brand new.
 
Diligent maintenance! The beasts were designed to last, function in th' bottom of a bucket of *dung* even half-right. With a fresh rebuild and all within spec there's no reason to embellish the design, IMO.

...but to each his own. :shrug:
 
Doc,

My original engine had NO sludge in the pan or in the head because it had the oil changed every 3,000 miles or 3 months. Overkill? Maybe, but that's the way that it was maintained, so I had no blockage in the oil galleys.
 
s'what I'm sayin' Paul. Clean engine, proper maintenance, no need for the "extra" oil up there.

Brosky said:
... I installed an auxiliary line after that with a alloy cover and sucked in 3 qts. of oil per 1,000 miles, so that wasn't a good move. Needless to say, the cover came off and when I rebuilt the engine, so did the line.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:
 
I also use the standard way of feeding the rockers with oil.
If the engine is okay and you run it without the valve cover you have 8 little geysers about an inch high on top of each rocker.

Cheers
Chris
 
There are roller tip rockers with shaft bushings and there are roller tip rockers with roller bearings on the shaft. I could see a possible reason for increasing the oil to the top end with the rockers with roller bearings on the shaft since they will probably allow more oil to flow past them (although they require less oil so it may be a wash unless no oil gets to the front rocker).
With rockers that have plain bushings like the Harland-Sharpe roller tip rockers, I can't see a reason.
With modern oils, i can't see why you would have sludge build up in your engine.
If you wanted to increase the oil flow up top, I would be more inclined to increase the diameter, by 10%, of the oil ways to the top end, rather than add on some hose that has the potential to leak at the connections. This would also reduce the chance of a blockage.
I would not want to reduce the oil to my rods and mains in any way in a tr4, so i wouldn't do it.
Rob
 
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