The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop The sad saga of Grant's engine woes

As I posted a couple weeks ago I had to tow my truck home with a only 40K on a rebuilt 235 because of rod noise. It turned out that a lock washer on the wrist pin pinch bolt had broken leaving a gap that was taken up by deformation of the small end of #1 rod. Very noisy. Anyhwo, finding this out I thought it could be easily fixed with a new rod and pulled one out of my spare 61 block. My '54 with 50K original miles before rebuild had matched rods (as well as original oil and coolant). The 61 rods weighs 30 grams less than the 54 rods. I ran this by the machine shop I had planned to have check and recondition the rod and had mixed opinions, with one person saying, well it's only a six and won't be seeing anything over 4K. I don't like an imbalanced engine and went home thinking I might put in the whole set of 61 rods and find a new machine shop to recondition them. This really makes me think it might be time to build another engine, a 261. The only trouble is I don't have a enough time to do this now and go the the Wendall truck show to blow the doors off Tony's 261.

Anywho. I thinking of putting this repair on hold as it get more involved and build another. You look at what is left in the engine bay, everything is apart and think maybe it's time to bail. I also have a problem with this otherwise nice running engine, it smokes out the breather and valve cover at idle. Hit the throtle or go down the road and it stops.
Finally, three questions:
#1: Anyone know why an engine smokes out the draft tube and vale cover only at idle.
#2: I think I know this one already, but is 30 grams way to excessive for differences in rod weights.
#3: Should I use lockwashers on the pinch bolts or not? Obviously, I had a bad experience using them. The 61 enigne I took apart today had none. Others I see also have none. One book I saw shows them being used. What's the deal?

Thanks,

1.Find another machine shop that cares about their customers.
2.30 grams is too much for a moving part.
3.use loc-tite.The less parts you have, the less you have that will fail.

On an inline six the crank is balanced by it self,unlike a V-8, so the weight of the rods and pistons should not be an issue as long as the individual parts weigh the same.
My unbalanced, no lock washer, oily 261 is gonna wup some butt in 2 weeks

Just as long as it isn`t your own!!!

I spoke with Tom Langdon yesterday. Ditch the lockwashers. Prep the bolts with Clean-n-Prime and then use red loc-tite.