My 302 was running great but now runs rough and is making a ticking noise. I suspect a stuck lifter or collapsed if they are hydrualic. I do not know. I was thinking I might have this problem with the roofing tar I found for oil in it. I have a quart of Mystery oil in it now. I have flushed the oil twice with filter. I am going to the hanger and pick up my compression tester to confirm this. Any good tricks to un-stick one of these? Or am I looking at pulling the heads?

I have set the timing and points after replacing the cap rotor wires and coil. The plugs are almost new.

 

pull the heads, you wont regret it, it'll give you a chance to really check out the engine.

 

Is that what is necessary to get to the lifters?

 

honestly, the cheap dirty way is to pull the valve covers, and pull the rockers and work the lifter up and down till it moves freely. so turn the engine over and find the lifter thats stuck then keep turning mtoto over and working the lifter up and down.

but i suggest just pulling the heads

 

you would only have to pull the intake and valve covers to get at the lifters.If the engine is that sluged up the lifters probably won't pull out to easy but then again they might.

 

You can pull the intake manifold to see lifters, but pulling valve covers to see if valve train is damaged (bent push rods, lose rockers, valve keepers and springs etc...) is far easier. If you have roofing tar oil, rough running engine and ticking noises; it might be time for rebuild.

 

After work today I will compression check it. I tried to buy spark plugs yesterday but the Napa store did not have any. They should be in this morning. I fully expect this thing to turn ugly and need an overhaul but I owe it to myself to start slow. I am a subscriber to the church of Murphy.

At a museum where I worked as lead mechanic they bought a Lockheed P-38-L5. It was flown in from England. When it arrived it needed a good wash, so off to the wash rack it went. The wash personnel promptly blew sections of paint off it with the pressure washer. So it was decided to strip and repaint. After stripping we found large quantities of bondo and then it was decided that a full restoration was in order involving most all new skins. So a wash turned into a complete disassembly. Many of you may have seen this aircraft when it was in the Harris auto museum in Reno NV. We also ended up with the FORD TRI-MOTOR that Harris restored. It was the airplane that convinced him he did not want to restore anymore airplanes. He could have bought another casino for what it cost him.

If it ain't broke don't fix it?

 

It was HARRAH'S Auto Collection...in Reno, not Harris Auto Museum. Bill Harrah started the museum in 1948, when he operated a bingo parlor in Venice CA.

When Bill Harrah died in June 1977, his children had no interest in keeping the Harrah empire intact, so they sold the collection, the casinos and the hotels to Holiday Inn's Inc.

Holiday Inn's then auctioned off all the vehicles, the planes, boats and the vast former William Lyons collection of Western memorabilia, that Harrah had acquired after Lyons passed away.

Except...that is...for 200 vehicles, along with the museum building (a former ice house) and the land that Harrah had willed to the city of Reno.

Today, it called the National Auto Museum.

Harrah also restored boats. One was an excursion steamer that once plied Lake Tahoe, that he salvaged from the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

P-38 Lightning, aka the "Twin Tailed Devil." USAAF pilots flying these planes shot down Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's seaplane over Buna in the South Pacific in 1943, killing him.

Yamamoto was the architect of the Pearl Harbor Attack and Commander in Chief of the Japanese Navy, which never recovered from his loss.

GM director of styling Harley Earl loved the looks of this aircraft. The tailfins first used on the 1948 Cadillac...mimiced the look of the P-38's tailfins.