Best Head Gasket for my 427 SO

[steve meltzer]

OK, I found the torque and tightening sequence. thanx. s

[steve meltzer]

Just in from the garage and took off the intake from the cast iron 427 SO, only to discover two seemingly new issues....one is new for sure.

1) Not sure this is new, but as I removed the push rods, i noted that two of them, at least, were bent. I was so flabergasted that I didn't pay attention to whether or not they came from the same cylinder. That sure seems weird to me, esp. since the car never gets driven hard. Other than replacing them, anything i need to watch for, or check first??

2) There was clearly a broken tooth on the distributor drive gear. About 1/2 broken off. Picture attached. What, if anything do i do about the missing chipped tooth. Maybe Patrick's daughter, a dentist would have a rec! I understand that I'll need to replace the gear, but can i just drain the oil and hope for the best or?? It's mate on the cam.

thanx steve

[patrickt]

This is one of the stranger threads we've had. Any chance they were not bent before you removed the intake the first time? In other words, were the bends so obvious that you couldn't have missed them the last time you took the intake off?

[steve meltzer]

You're probably right...I think that at least one was so bent it would have been hard to miss. Maybe it just happened, but why? I didn't even drive the car as the leak was pretty profound, so after a few starts, and no revving up, I shut it down, and started back after the re-do.

And what of the chipped tooth? Maybe pour some more oil in, start it up and then change the oil? No easy or clear cut answers to my way of thinking.

Glad I could provide some Saturday nite entertainment!

steve

[patrickt]

Usually, when you think of FEs, that have been running ok for a while, and then start bending push rods, you think of stuck valves, or something obvious breaking on the valve train, springs binding up, or a really unusual misfire. But you had it all apart, and then put it back together, and ate a tooth on the distributor gear and bent two rods. I don't know. Maybe the distributor gear caused a funky misfire that created too much pressure for the push rods to go up against. Surely if there was obvious binding/rubbing/etc., or the lash was way out of line, you would have seen that. But that wouldn't eat the distributor gear....

[Gaz64]

On any pushrod engine suffering from bent pushrods, the usual culprits are insufficient valve retainer to guide/seal clearance or rocker to stud clearance.
Something in the valvetrain is not correct.

The distributor drive gear is too high in relation to the cam drive gear, either fitted too high on the shaft, as observed by the new hole in the driven gear, or gasket too thick.

The wear pattern and resultant gear tooth failure shows this.

Gary