Tight engine. Loosing my mind troubleshooting.

Engine was stock 454. 50k miles on it. Changed cam, heads, intake, gaskets and seals.

Pulled rear bearing cap to change rear main seal. Bearing looked perfect. Reinstalled and torqued cap per factory service manual.

Bottom end is fairly tight without valve train, takes about 40 ft lbs to turn.

Cam rotates with no effort when valve train is unloaded.

Setting lifter preload (hydraulic) on intake side doesn't affect the amount of torque to turn crank by much.

When I get to #6 on the exhaust side, it gets real hard to turn the engine.

Heads are 049 ovals. New guides and valve job. New Melling valves, Viton seals, COMP springs, locks and retainers to match cam.

Assembly lube on everything. Valves moved freely during head assembly.

Next step is to pull the viton seals off the exhaust valves and replace with umbrella seals.

Looking for a sanity check.

I take it this is without plugs installed?

Are you sure you didn’t swap intake/exhaust pushrods? Will the springs supplied with the heads support the valve lift? What about the slot in the rocker arm, is it hitting the rocker stud? Will that valve fully open and close easily? Excessive carbon on top of the pistons???

Customblue said:

I take it this is without plugs installed?

Click to expand...

Correct

Matt69olds said:

Are you sure you didn’t swap intake/exhaust pushrods? Will the springs supplied with the heads support the valve lift? What about the slot in the rocker arm, is it hitting the rocker stud? Will that valve fully open and close easily? Excessive carbon on top of the pistons???

Click to expand...

Positive pushrods are correct.
Springs are part of a kit, and have plenty of coil space.
Rocker arms clear.
Valves open and close smooth.
Minimal carbon.

I'm pulling the engine back out tomorrow and going through everything again.

One thing I didn't mention, my friend that was helping me pried on the rear of the crank with a big ass screw driver when replacing the rear main seal. I'm worried the crank is no longer straight.

One of those corn fed retard friends?

Found the problem.

Dropped the main caps one at a time and rotated the engine. #1 cap was causing the drag. Probably from hammering the balancer on like a tard. Re torqued mains and pressed the balancer on with the right tool and it's back to normal.

Don't be dumb and hammer balancers on like I did.

Hammering it off should've put it back to spec.

Cornfed

Lol yeap. That's the way I figure it too.

now that you have hammered on the balancer,make sure the center hole where the crank pulley centers is not peened over otherwise the pulley will not sit flat on the balancer. i was throwing belts at 5krpm and finally found the problem when i replaced the crank pulley. it was peened over by PO.

peats said:

now that you have hammered on the balancer,make sure the center hole where the crank pulley centers is not peened over otherwise the pulley will not sit flat on the balancer. i was throwing belts at 5krpm and finally found the problem when i replaced the crank pulley. it was peened over by PO.

Click to expand...

No problem there. I used a block of wood on the front of the balancer when I was abusing it.

Finally test drove the beast today. Sooo happy to be done working on this engine.

That's what you think.
If'n you ain't workin' on it, you've overlooked something.