So there we were driving down to Goodwood Revival at 6am on Sunday. Suddenly a large clattering and three cylinders. Took the rocker cover off and found the following:- rear cylinder exhaust rocker broken in half at the cam follower push rod end. Push rod bent and jammed in hole of the cylinder head. The inlet rocker has slid forward against the shaft spring and is resting on the valve spring washer, not the middle. Also the cam follower push rod is bent the same as the exhaust one - fowards. Suspected valves hitting pistons --- but no -- head now off and no visible damage to either pistons or head and valves !!!???. Now what I can not understand is why the rods are bent. The valves move up and down OK. If the cam followers had just jammed upwards, it would have just left the valves open and off the cam. The question is what happened first --- the exhaust rocker snapping ? or the inlet rocker sliding forward, but why the bent push rods ???.
Very lucky my, newish Dennis Welch aluminuim fast road head was not destroyed. Now have ordered an new 'roller rocker' set, plus 8 new rods to match.
What I do not want to do is install new Rockers, shaft and push rods and have same thing happen, as I have no sensible explanation of the sequence of what happened and why, except i do know rockers were the original 60 year old items, but the shaft was less than ten years old.
Very lucky my, newish Dennis Welch aluminuim fast road head was not destroyed. Now have ordered an new 'roller rocker' set, plus 8 new rods to match.
What I do not want to do is install new Rockers, shaft and push rods and have same thing happen, as I have no sensible explanation of the sequence of what happened and why, except i do know rockers were the original 60 year old items, but the shaft was less than ten years old.