Stroker Motor Questions

[Cliff Foster]

Have a few ????'s. I am upgrading to a 408 stroker motor from a 360 that's being bored out to .030 over. After the mechanic pulled my 360 out to send it to the shop he found premature wear in the crank side of #1 and #2 connecting rods which they found to have been lack of oil to the front cylinders. How can I cure that? Second they also found dirt and crap in the bottom of my oil pan. Motor only has 20k medium to medium easy miles on it. I use Fram X2 filter most recently(8000 mi 2 oil changes) once with Redline 20/50 and once with Mobil1 15/50 synthetic. Does anyone know of a high perf filter that will catch all of the dirt with sythetic oil?

[rumblefish360]

Since your rebuilding the engine, you'll just have to make sure the oil passages are clear and your oil pump is up to snuff. There should be no problem with oiling.
The crap and dirt in the oil pan could be from the break in lube and or moly lube used in the engine for protecting new parts on the last rebuild.
Fram filters have a bad wrap in general. Try a search on filters here. There was a post on this befroe on what's the best filter.

[AAR4fun]

My brother had done some research on filters a while back. He is an aircraft defense engineer for Lockheed and has alway been absolutely anal about details, like oil filters, oil, etc.

I was surprised to learn he found Puralator Pure One is one of the best filters on the market and catches more than the old reliable brand I won't mention, FRAM. According to him, Dodge has contracted with Puralator for production and service Viper filters under the Mopar brand. Puralator Pure One also has a valve in it to hold the oil in the system once the car has been shut off.

I guess if he is willing to run them in a $70k Viper, I'm ok with them in the AAR.

[Cliff Foster]

Originally posted by AAR4fun
My brother had done some research on filters a while back. He is an aircraft defense engineer for Lockheed and has alway been absolutely anal about details, like oil filters, oil, etc.

I was surprised to learn he found Puralator Pure One is one of the best filters on the market and catches more than the old reliable brand I won't mention, FRAM. According to him, Dodge has contracted with Puralator for production and service Viper filters under the Mopar brand. Puralator Pure One also has a valve in it to hold the oil in the system once the car has been shut off.

I guess if he is willing to run them in a $70k Viper, I'm ok with them in the AAR.

I'll have to give that one a try. What do you guys think about the oil filter from K&N? Or does
that one get the ee: (CRAP) vote too. I'll for sure give it a whirl. I want to make sure that I'm getting the best stuuf I can for this motor. It does tend to get a litle exspensive when parts don't do what they are supposed to.

[fox]

As you have already been told, fram is at the low end of the good filter list.
The oil/ lube problem can be solved by adding a line from between the two lifter lube lines. The small block needs a little help to get the front of the engine lubed correctly at high rpm. One of the car mags did an article ( car craft?) this spring on it.
Have you been reving it up?

fox

[AAR4fun]

Check this out. Don't know about the credibility, but it's interesting never the less.


http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/oil_filter_study/

[AAR4fun]

I also read the article. It was Mopar Muscle and they were building a 408 pump gas smallblock. I was left with the impression they were unclear if their fix was value add, it just seem like a good idea.

As far as I know, the small blocks don't really have oiling problems. I just built a 415 small block and posed the question to Ken Lazzari at Indy Cylinder Head. I read an article where Herb McCandless built a 500+ hp 360 and had drilled and plugged oil passages. Ken used to work for McCandless and his opinion was unless you are planning to push the motor beyond 600hp, the oiling system is fine. Besides, the oem small blocks will start to come apart at 600hp so you should be using another block anyway to target those kind of numbers. He has built alot of strokers, so I went with his advise.

As for your problem with unusual wear, it's hard to say why you experienced the problem. Could be casting flash in an oil passage, bearing clearance, poor machine work from the factory or many other reasons. I would just make sure all the passages are clear and the core is sound (sonic check). Simply, because to build your engine right, you will be align boring, decking and squaring and using all new componants in the rotating assembly.

It won't be the same motor you just took apart. If you question the quality of the block, boneyard has em for $100 a pop.

[sanborn]

A couple of comments trying to be helpful; most oil filters have definite oil flow limitations, and the bypass valve in the filter is not large enough to flow a lot of oil either. If you have tried to run a lot of RPM with the standard filter, you could have gotten a pressure drop in the main oil galley and the front oil passages would suffer most. A better fix would be a remote filter like an Oberg or System One. They will flow enough oil for your application.

Second comment-and I'm not trying to toot my horn- check the oval track section, go to "Typical Oiling Modifications"-check it out(complete with photos). This post was built around a little iron head 360 oval track engine, engine turns 7800-8000 every lap, lots of races, bearings look good.

[cuda66273]

If your gonna run a Fram you might as well save you money and block off the filter housing.

WIX
NAPA Gold (WIX)
Purolator

All are good to about 100 PSI after that the WIX HP black filter is recommended.

My 2 cents worth anyhow

[AAR4fun]

That's funny!!

Sad thing is I ran FRAM for years because of their reputation during in the Muscle Car era. Anyone who raced ran FRAM.

Ohh times, she sa changin...

[Cliff Foster]

Originally posted by fox
As you have already been told, fram is at the low end of the good filter list.
The oil/ lube problem can be solved by adding a line from between the two lifter lube lines. The small block needs a little help to get the front of the engine lubed correctly at high rpm. One of the car mags did an article ( car craft?) this spring on it.
Have you been reving it up?

fox

Of course it's seen lots of RPM's. It's the 2bbl,fuel injected version of the Magnum380 with Magnum R/T heads and a kick-ass exhaust. But it is a daily driver and I only punish the tires and the tachometer needle up to 6000rpm every so often. I've had a few people tell me that it's starving in the higher rpm's and it's just not getting enough oil to front of the motor; even with the high perf oil pump. I've been told of the system-1 and that might be the way i might go, but what about the K&N filter? Is that about the same quality or better than the Fram, i guess from the way it sounds, it couldn't be any worse. My machine guy is doing some work with the block to open up some stuff and do some other creative things to help it lube better. It has 10:1 pistons in it now, but they are coming out for Ross 8.5:1 compression for future use of a supercharger.

[Doug Wilson]

I've been using the Fram X2 (if that's the $10.00 one) on my wife's new Subaru Legacy GT along with Castrol 5W-50 Syntec. I sawed the old filter in half at the change last week, and it looked awfully robust inside to me.

[sanborn]

The long(about 8") System One filter should do what you want. Don't use the short System One-it probably won't flow enough oil for you. The neat thing about system One (or Oberg) is they are cleanable filters. And the stainless screens catch all the trash so you can look at the type of trash in your engine. The System One has a flow limit(we collapsed a couple before we went away from them) but I don't think you will ever get to the limit.

Don't know anything about K&N oil filters, their air filters are very good.

[leon441]

During cold starts you are possibly bypassing the filter when the oil is thick take a filter apart and youll see what I mean. I don't know about Ken L. at Indy Herb says to do the work in the oil passages especially on a 360 big main block. I spun more rod bearings because this wasn't done properly. If you are not running a hydraulic cam block off the lifters. Mancini used to sell the kit. It consist of a tube you put in the passenger side oil; gallery and then you take the tool provided and dent the tube at each lifter hole you also block off the drivers side in the main cap by drilling and tapping the gallery and putting a set screw in. The better way is bushing thed lifter bores but it is costly. I ran the tube for years and had no problems until the very end when a lifter cut into the tube at the number eight cylinder. Later I Nitroused the block over what it could take.