Ford Racing 427 burning oil

[mreid]

Chris, do you have a part number or size?

In a related point, I have a Ford Racing 347 with the Z heads in my 66 Mustang. I bought the engine in 2008. I pulled a valve cover yesterday and guess what, it has orange seals. However, they work fine with no smoking or excess oil consumption. Chris, I thought you had problems in all cylinders? If not, perhaps the problem is only in the cylinders with the missing tension clips?

Really glad to hear you got it sorted! Nice job!

[blykins]

mreid,

If you're planning on changing yours, I would suggest using the Viton rubber seals over the Teflon seals. I have seen the Teflon seals get hard or brittle and not seal as well over time. The Viton seals provide a much better seal.

[Mike Huddart]

Might be a bit of confusion here, and undue alarm, with all this orange business.
The seals that Ford sell in the FMS catalogue are the nitrile rubber ones with a flat retaining spring on the guide as yours but an external helical wound spring on the valve bit, just like the internal spring in a conventional seal.
They come in black for intake and orange for exhaust but if you get them on their assembled heads they all seem to be orange. They work OK.
What YOU seem to have are the latest hard plastic "Ultimate Duty " seals marketed by somebody called Valve Train Only ( VTO ) ! and sold by Howards Cams # 93315, intestingly both from Oshkosh WI...Hmmm.
They are colour coded for size and the ones for 11/32 valves ( yours ) are......Orange. They do not have a top circlip as the ones in your photo
Amongst the claims they make apart from the usual "space age" nonsense, is one that they are "self lubricating" quite why you would want something self lubricating when they are permanently covered in oil escapes me.
Also the "Design allows small amount of oil for guide lube " ! How much is "small " and does small get big when dealing with the massive vacuum from a 427W
Apparently they are installed with finger pressure only BUT they have to be glued / sealed onto the guide with an enclosed sachet of glue, if you think you had these hard plastic seals, were they glued in place ?
Interestingly, in spite of all the marvelous qualities they claim to have they sell for about half the price of the white Perfect Circle seals you have replaced them with. Very strange.

Mike

[GBowman]

Yikes...I have a BDR on order with the 427 Z351 Alum block/CNC heads-I need to call Frank at Backdraft because my motor is from the same vintage, completed in July so pretty close. uh-ohhhhhh

[Cashburn]

Originally Posted by GBowman

Yikes...I have a BDR on order with the 427 Z351 Alum block/CNC heads-I need to call Frank at Backdraft because my motor is from the same vintage, completed in July so pretty close. uh-ohhhhhh

That all aluminum Ford Racing 427 is a prototype engine they had there for awhile, so the timeframe may have no impact. Have them verify it's not doing any of this.

For the record we have installed about 14 of these engines in the last year. Of those 14 we have only seen this smoking on 1 engine that is currently back in our shop for service. We changed out the seals with a set Ford Racing provided and they did not solve the situation. However, the set we were supplied look nothing like the ones that worked for 68pony.

So we are looking for solutions on that 1 engine (purchased around the April time frame).

[68pony]

The white ones we put in are 11/32 the brand was pioneer, the orange ones were not glued as they came off easy and had little tension, all i can say is we know of three 427's here in sydney including mine that had this smoke issue all three had orange seals all three were replaced with the white ones pictured and all three stopped smoking after this was done, the orange ones might work fine on the same head for a 347 but a 427 is a different ball game, maybe they just were not fitted correctly i don't know but i'm a happy chappy now and went cruising yesterday and it was nice to see NO smoke wafting out from my rear view mirror

[GBowman]

Cashburn...I spoke with Frank, he said no issues with the motor in #1061-it has over 100 miles on it so I would expect if there was an issue they would have seen the symptoms by now. I will def put the hairy eyeball on it. Thx for the input.

Are you saying you installed 14 of the Alum block motors up there with 1 problem or 14 of the motors like 68Pony's? thx again

[Luce]

Perfect! So they're intended to leak. Why even install seals?

Well, I don't think it's worth the time and headache to try and deal with Ford. I guess I'll just drop the $32 for a new set.

But I will badmouth Ford any chance I get about this.

[68pony]

Originally Posted by Luce

Perfect! So they're intended to leak. Why even install seals?

Well, I don't think it's worth the time and headache to try and deal with Ford. I guess I'll just drop the $32 for a new set.

But I will badmouth Ford any chance I get about this.

Luce please tell ford racing about your issue, if you don't then they think everything is alright, they might also think i'm making this up, i didn't have the luxury of doing this myself and had to pay someone, and ford racing should be accountable, if there are more complaints they will take this issue more seriously, and i can get my money back for the repairs, if people just fix it and don't say anything how would ford racing know of any issues regarding the seals.
regards chris.

[mike harter]

Hi chris i wrote you a while back about my 427 that i had sent back to Ford for excessive oil and smoke comsunption. I hope you got it taken care of .I say shame on ford but on the other hand they paid for all shipping and went through my motor and made it right. Took out the break in oil and put in joe gibbs high zinc 10/30 hotrod oil. i now have 900 miles on it and it has used about a pint of oil. They did dyno it at 545 h.p.@6000 rpm and it does haul ass. GOOD LUCK let me know. Mike fron San Jose Ca.

[Mike Huddart]

Originally Posted by Luce

Perfect! So they're intended to leak. Why even install seals?

Well, I don't think it's worth the time and headache to try and deal with Ford. I guess I'll just drop the $32 for a new set.

But I will badmouth Ford any chance I get about this.

OOOH ! $32, you need to change suppliers, those little white ones ( in my opinion still the best if fitted properly ) normally jobber for about $18 and can be as low as $13.50.
Interestingly, Pioneer, allready mentioned, list those orange ones too under the SVR ( severe service ) branding, made from DuPont flouropolymer material, whatever that is, as opposed to Teflon. Pioneer trumpet their advantage as being "impervious to racing fuels, alcohol and nitro ", just as Howard Cams do. Then go on to say, also, that they alow oil flow to the guide making them " ideal for street use "
Alcohol and nitro on the street........ REALLY
Mike

[Luce]

Blowing oil out the tail pipe is also not acceptable for a street engine.

The $32 set was Comp cams from summit. They had some I liked for $109 for 100, but I'm not expecting to change them at every oil change.

Even at $32 a set, they'll pay for themselves in about 4000 miles with the oil consumption reduction.

To Chris, I'll fire off a snotty email as a favor to you. Thanks for starting this thread and sharing. You did save me a big pain in the a$$. I can do this easily now and with no troubleshooting. With all of the EFI stuff in the way, pulling the intake would really suck, and that would have been my attempt to remedy this.

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by blykins

mreid,

If you're planning on changing yours, I would suggest using the Viton rubber seals over the Teflon seals. I have seen the Teflon seals get hard or brittle and not seal as well over time. The Viton seals provide a much better seal.

Another vote for viton.

I use viton in every engine now, will never use teflon again.
I've seen too many failures; broken, split etc.