Hi Folks - hoping I might be able to glean some help here. I'm trying to force an 87 GL EA82 back to road life, 280k miles on the engine.

 

When I bought her she had a hell of a tick of death, so I did the standard oil pump O-ring and seals replacement,  along with all accessible seals on the front of the engine.

Drove her around a bit more, TOD slightly better but still very very apparent after a few days, so I popped open the valve cover (R hand side, it's a left hand drive as I'm in the states)to take a look while also addressing a pretty good oil leak from the cover gasket. Clink, clank, out falls what appears to be an (extra?) valve spring, a valve spring retainer, and the bottom half of an HLA. I'll be damned but it appears there is NO rocker on the frontmost valve (#3 intake?). None. Nada. Zilch.

Long story short, my questions are as follows:

1) Are the oil ports in the cam portion of an EA82 head big enough to Houdini an entire rocker arm along with the retainer keepers (which are also notably missing from this particular valve)?

2) Why in the world would there be five valve springs in a head that only has four valves? It's a large spring only slightly smaller than the remaining valve springs, and was rolling about in the bottom of the cam area just like the half of the lifter.

3) Where in the heck can I source another rocker at least if I cannot locate the missing link? I know where I can get lifters, no biggie, but the rocker (and potentially a cam) are what elude me at the moment.

Edited April 13, 20205 yr by mka
added question 3

I think you have to take the cam carrier off.  People have replaced head gaskets in car.  I don't do it that way, I remove the engine.  Never had a reason to only pull the cams.   That is one unusual failure you have.

Each valve has 2 springs, one inside the other. this is done for high RPM / resonance reasons.

Begin keeping an eye out for spare parts, engines, etc.  Lots of parts are NLA.

 

I think I got a good read on what I have to do to check up on the state of the engine, after a lot ( A LOT) of google-fu i found this thread: 

https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/97832-valve-train-problems/

And I think something similar has happened in my engine. Gotta check out my valve motion and find my rocker + retainer keepers, or whatever is left of them, and triage from there. I suspect it wasn't maintained pretty well, ran low on oil and siezed up a lifter, ultimately causing this somehow? What little is left of my lifter assembly is pretty chewed up. 

The frontmost cam also looks pretty trashed, moreso on the non-lobe face - like it's been run like this for far too long. It may barely still be runnable if i can manage to find and/or replace all the parts aside from the cam (You're right, DaveT, parts are like hen's teeth). I'm hoping that's the case - a new reman head costs almost as much as I paid for the car. I'll check valve motion after yanking the cam carrier, I'm hoping the non-interference nature of this engine saved it from the worst of it. If it's too thrashed it may either be time for an EJ swap (or even better, an EV swap). 

Edited April 13, 20205 yr by mka

I’ve not been able to replace rocker arms with the engine in the car, without removing the carrier. 

The HLAs compress, so conceivably it’s possible with the right tooling or approach.  If you make one I’d love to rent it lol

The engine is non-interference, that just saves the valves from being hit by the pistons if a timing belt breaks.  If it was run low enough of oil to cause that damage, I think it would be pretty well trashed everywhere else.  I wouldn't consider buying a reman head.   Get a whole junkyard engine.  Or 2.  Less work.   Or do the swap.  More work.

 

1 hour ago, DaveT said:

The engine is non-interference, that just saves the valves from being hit by the pistons if a timing belt breaks.  If it was run low enough of oil to cause that damage, I think it would be pretty well trashed everywhere else.  I wouldn't consider buying a reman head.   Get a whole junkyard engine.  Or 2.  Less work.   Or do the swap.  More work.

 

After digging into it a little further this afternoon, I agree that a reman head is - like you said - not the way to go.

That being said (read: you're probably right... BUT) - I have so little into the car and there is negligible zero to anything other than that one lobe of the cam that I'm willing to roll the dice against that probably very sage, obviously much more experienced advice.

I've (finally) managed to source replacements for the parts that appear nicked up, including the camshaft itself (surprise surprise, deltacam.com out of Washington will send a fresh one out for $65+core charge). My intention is to pop the oil pan to clean out the bits of lifter, and scope the cylinder or remove the head to inspect it. If it's not too too bad, I'm going to try to rebuild it. If it's trash, I'll be doing a swap of some kind or another.

Edited April 14, 20205 yr by mka

You’ll probably find you will have little visual access to the cylinders with the sump off in the EA82 from what I remember of my rebuild well over a decade ago - so I could be wrong. I just remember a rib like cage below the crank area, probably for strength. 

Personally, I’d say hunt for a good EJ. 

Cheers 

Bennie

1 hour ago, el_freddo said:

You’ll probably find you will have little visual access to the cylinders with the sump off in the EA82 

This.  Isn’t much access or options here. 
GD always says to cut the oil filter open and see how much metal, swirl or other oddities you find there.  You’ll get to see the contents of the bottom of the pan, that’s about it. Which can probably be addressed without pulling it. 

Yeah, not much to see removing the pan.  Other than the bottom of the pan.

Dropping in a decent cam, and the other small bits at least isn't a big investment in time or $.   I might be tempted to try it, if it does turn out to just be a failure there, saves a lot of $ and work.

Actually,  how do the other cam lobes look?  I'd expect all of them to be damaged if it was run low for a long time.

Sorry, if i wasn't clear, i will either be using a borescope to inspect the cylinder through the spark plug holes or removing the head in its entirety. The sump needs to come off because I have to get the remaining pieces  of the lifter out of it as they're too big to pull out through the bung by magnet fishing . 

 

The other cam lobes are (at least to my eye) pristine. Crisp corners, no scratches. 

 

Edited April 14, 20205 yr by mka

ok, If the others look that good, it was probably a local failure that killed only that one. 
Just fix what's broken.

 

That's the plan thus far, but I found another hiccup, sadly - It would appear the lip of the bore for the offending lifter has been beat up a bit, but only just the lip. Additional plan on that is to *carefully* clean the lip of the brass(?) bore insert with a reamer/burr removal tool and then potentially hone it with a ball hone. I seem to recall reading that those bores are not a serviceable item. Is that indeed the case?

I think they are steel.  I never saw any mention of anyone replacing one.  Just clean up the edge.  I wouldn't touch the bore, unless it's got damage.

 

7 hours ago, DaveT said:

I think they are steel.  I never saw any mention of anyone replacing one.  Just clean up the edge.  I wouldn't touch the bore, unless it's got damage.

 

This.

clean up hard edges and snags enough to fit the HLA. I wouldn’t do any more work in that area than necessary, it’s not critical besides fixing the HLA in place.  

Will do, thanks to the both of you. I poked around and looked at how the other lifters sit. I'll do the bare minimum to get the lifter to fit back in nicely but otherwise leave it be.

 

Edited April 15, 20205 yr by mka
spelling

did anyone above suggest one position in the 360 degrees may be easier to get the rocker thing back in ?

I stuffed things up on one assembly done in car, and found the rocker was straddling where it was supposed to be

found it before starting thank Fuji !

Did it from the underside and a tyre lever helped squish a spring/valve in from memory, succcess...

 

ohh, get pair of cams unless Delta can supply exact match of what you have on other side , or could be a weird engine  : > 

Edited April 16, 20205 yr by Step-a-toe

18 hours ago, Step-a-toe said:

did anyone above suggest one position in the 360 degrees may be easier to get the rocker thing back in ?

I stuffed things up on one assembly done in car, and found the rocker was straddling where it was supposed to be

found it before starting thank Fuji !

Did it from the underside and a tyre lever helped squish a spring/valve in from memory, succcess...

 

ohh, get pair of cams unless Delta can supply exact match of what you have on other side , or could be a weird engine  : > 

From what I understand it's with the cam roll pin at 12 o'clock. I figure I'll find that out when I get to it. It's a bit late for me to get the pair,  the other is already on the way. If it runs oddly I'll swap out the other side but at this moment I don't see a pressing reason to do so (best practices aside). 

Update to this project - Got my new cam, lifter, and some other misc. bits. assembly lubed and  reassembled everything. I did the timing (not in the car thankfully) and  when giving hte engine the cursory check of turning it over a few turns by hand, i heard the now-distinct click-clack-clunk of the rocker falling off the valve again. Cracked the cover back open and the same valve is sticking. I think this may have been the ultimate root cause. Sticking valve due to sitting for who knows how long->  running like a dog on a  dropped rocker for who knows how long -> mangled lifter in my oil pan for you guessed it, who knows how long.

 

Here's hoping there's no major cylinder damage.

 

As a semi-sidebar, the frontmost valve on the right-hand side (US passenger's side) of the engine - is it an intake or exhaust valve? Chances are i'll need a new one.

Scratch the last post - answered my own question. It's labeled. The good news is the valve wasn't bent. The bad news is that it was completely snapped, and has been rattling around the cylinder for quite a long time judging by the carbon buildup on it. Also the previous owner had installed a spark plug about a half inch too long, which i think might have been my precipitating problem:

Long spark plug -> Stuck open/broken valve -> dropped rocker -> disintegrated lifter.

Surprised it was still running when i pulled the engine out.

Wow.   That's crazy.    I'm not surprised it would run though.  How are the cylinder  and piston?