During a nice Sat cruise I started noticing the valves getting louder and an intermittent engine miss. Oil pressure was OK for my 49 216 so I turned around and headed back to the homestead. About 8 miles from the house it started missing badly, lacked power to the point it would hardly pull the last hill and the valves were really sounding off. It got me home so I started troubleshooting.
What I found makes it amazing it got me home.
The bolt that secures the 5/6 rocker shaft tower had worked loose enough to where cyl's 5 & 6 were dead. The loud clacking was probably the rockers hitting the valve stems.
The motion of the loose rocker shaft caused the oil feeder line to drop which eventually broke it via contact with a push rod.
I thought I could splice the line but once I removed the side pan I found it was broke at the bend at the soldered connector so it was toast.
Back when I got it running approx 8500 miles ago I thought I'd have to replace that oil line so I had the kit on hand plus a new side pan gasket kit so after knocking out a few chores I decided to tackle it.
5 hrs later I had a running truck again.

I gotta say that getting the oil line attached to the oil distribution fitting behind the exhaust pipe was the most time consuming with getting that big ole side plate back on with all the gaskets in place the 2nd.

I decided to put thread locker on the rocker shaft bolts then torqued them to 30 ft lbs (just like before).

All in all I'm lucky in that it not only got me home but I had the needed parts on hand. No additional damage was observed and my team played one of it's worst games of the year and lost so I didn't miss it much either.

Wonder how much time the old flat rate book would have gave for it?
Dave

1949 Chevy 1/2-Ton 3100
1949 GMC 1/2-ton 100
In the Stovebolt Gallery
More pix on Photobucket
Video of the 216 running
Video of a Winter Cruise