A while back I posted about some really, really thick carbon deposits on my passenger side valve-train, definitely from a neglected PCV valve. I did the valve covers, cleaned the best I could and thought I'd check in another 10,000 miles.

Well, I just checked and it's not much better, possibly even worse. I'm pulling as much of the valve train as I can with the head still on, cleaning everything and gonna slap it back together.

Luckily the engine is all steel (I love Ford) short of the pushrods which may be bronze (i dunno?), so I'm going to spray down the valve train with some pretty strong solvents and then flush the oil after 50 miles, after cleaning the arms, pushrods, etc.. seperately. I did some research and I know what's safe and what isn't, though most of it isn't safe for rubber and it doesn't mean the stuff wont hurt lubrication, dislodge carbon and clog my pump, etc. You all know the drill

I've already got a good rear main and oil pan leak, which will be fixed soon, but I'm not going to bother if I can't get this head clean and I'll either drop in a diesel (im dreaming, really) or a 300.

anyways, wish me luck. I'm hoping most of the carbon will be disolved, it doesn't destroy valves and my seals stay strong enough for the next month or so.. and then im designing a better PCV system, not only do I have to deal with oil deposits in my intake (ugh), but also not enough vacuum to keep the carbon from building up (grr). This isn't the first Bronco I've seen with this problem.. the motor has good compression, but I know it's going to only take so much of this abuse before it tears itself apart.

 

Sounds like a good (but quite dangerous) plan, i hope it all goes well.

 

I did it.. cleaned everything up. After driving it for a day (about 50 miles, and it was running perfect, like new) I started the next morning and it started knocking. The more it ran, the worse it got. I freaked, I knew I had destroyed something.. it started missing ,running rough, etc.

Anyways, pulled the valve covers and one of my rocker arms were loose. I tightened them all, possibly too much, and threw everything back together. Right off the bat I was treated with a nasty idle, surging and a ton of blowby. Was almost sure that one rocker arm was an exhaust valve that caused damage..

I drained the new oil and it was pitch black after only the 50 miles.

after a few the idle smoothed out, still not as good as it was after I initially did the work. The blowby was pure steam, almost no smell to it but left creamy white residue. I'm not sure if I had blown a headgasket or what? It's not like in my 80s when I blew a headgasket, there are no signs of coolant in the oil, just pure water. It stopped after a while.

The surging idle is still there, I have no clue what that could be about, unless I destroyed valves or something.. i dunno, wish I had more experience with this kind of stuff.. I might learn how to rebuild an engine very soon if this keeps up.

What kind of damage could I have caused with that exhaust valve not opening? Burned valves or something more serious? That passenger side head got pretty hot.. not hot enough to burn me, but hot enough I couldn't hold my hand on the valve cover.

I also think I broke my EGR pipe and it seems as if the leaking oil from my valve cover blew both of my manifold flange gaskets.

GOOD NEWS, my oil galleys are free and clear now. One more oil change and the passenger head should look good as new.

 

If the stuff you ran through it thinned out the oil too much you probably seized a valve in the guide. Any obnoxious tapping at any point through all of this? If so, you probably had a valve stick or seize slightly open and when the cylinder cam up it smacked it and bent the valve. Now it doesn't seat properly and you have a cylinder or two with little to no compression. I'd do a compression test on all cylinders.

 

No tapping other than when the rocker came loose, at least, nothing abnormal. The rocker's made a very distinct noise, metal on metal, I have nothing like that right now.
My engine is a bit on the noisy side, it's hard to tell if it's something quiet. Both exhaust flanges have a recent leak, they definitely make a tapping sound, when I get that fixed I may hear something in the engine.

how easy would it be to overtighten my valves? I'm sort of concerned with that now.. but from what I know about these engines, you can't really overtighten the valves easily. I just sorta snugged the bolt on, didn't use too much force, didn't torque to spec and I know that's not recommended (would have saved myself this problem in the first place)

And oddly enough, before I pulled the rockers all of my rods could turn freely by hand. After tightening, the rods can't be turned by hand.. even when I had them tightened a bit on the loose side.

Oh, while on a test run tonight the Bronco was running pretty good, but I heard a backfire through the intake. Right away I wanted to say it had something to do with the valves, HOWEVER, before I did *ANY* of this it happened to me. I had no clue what it was, I had the windows up and it felt like I ran over something.. today I had the windows down and it was a definite backfire through the intake (have intake coming out of the side of the truck, makes it easy to hear).
Again, this happened before I had done anything with the valves.. it happens under light acceleration at cruising speed and only then, I played around with the throttle for a while and cannot recreate it. Recent changes since that backfire are a mile long.. O2 sensor, speed sensor, ACT, ECT, TPS, IAC cleaned a half dozen times, throttle body cleaned, coolant changed, started myself on a bottle of Lucas Injector Cleaner (before you suggested it in that other thread ), etc etc etc.

Could that backfire through the intake have anything to do with my EGR? possibly sticking or opening at the wrong time?

ohh, now that I think of it, I think it first happened when I removed the stupid hose from my air pump. The guy I got it from had the exhaust and intake for the air pump routed together (the muffler can and the air sucking thing on top of it).