302 spun rod/lifter?

[Invasivecoyote]

well today my little 302 bit the dust. it is a 89 foxbody; 5 speed with 4-10 gears.
afr 165 heads and ported upper ad lower intake, with f303 cam, zero deck. ect other mods.... comes in at 430 crank and 445 ft torque at 5500 rpm.
Anyways.... I turned the right on the last block to my house and opened it wide open and brought it up to 6K and graped second and brought my rpm down to about 4200 rpm got on it hard once more and got ready to grab 3rd and my rpms dropped hard and lost all power .
My question is; since I have yet to pull the motor out and perform a post mortem. what is the rpm/ power loss difference between a spun liter and spun rod. keep in mid I do not believe I have a spun lifter because there is not back fire through the intake ( I realize that this doesn't necessarily mean I spun a lifter. what causes a spun rod? And what causes a spun lifter? assuming you have perfect block prep work like i did and yes I did re use the old ford rods. But they spec out to text book serviceable.

[91stang]

Pull the valve covers, you should be able to tell if it busted a dog bone and rotated a lifter. If that happened at high RPM you will probably want to pull the bottom end apart and look at bearings for signs of crap being ran through them.

[Invasivecoyote]

I know how to find out if it is a spun lifter. It would not be the first time I have seen a dog bone bite the dust. I simply would like to know what leads to them breaking, or leads to a rod bearing spinning.
I know it wasn't due to oil pressure failing I run at 78lbs of oil pressure.

[MileHighMan]

I know how to find out if it is a spun lifter. It would not be the first time I have seen a dog bone bite the dust. I simply would like to know what leads to them breaking, or leads to a rod bearing spinning.
I know it wasn't due to oil pressure failing I run at 78lbs of oil pressure.

Pull the oil filter,,cut it open,,look for metal....Easy.

[Invasivecoyote]

pulling the oil filter is probably the best idea quick and easy (that only gets me so far. I want to know if a spun a main or a rod). here is my problem I'm in the mist of gathering all the parts for a fiero v8 swamp. I have a spare sbc laying around that I never ran. and this feiro has a 4 speed in it. should be fun. I'm also building a new 351w for the mustang so i'm really not in a big hurry to tear into it. I will upload pics of the tear down if people can explain how I can upload to this website.

[Kevin Johnson]

First, format your pics to be under 2mb in size. I have found that gifs display more readily than jpgs. When you post just scroll down to attachment and upload the file from your computer.

[MadBill]

The worst a single or pair of failed lifters could do is reduce power by ~15%. A spun rod can lose you 100%...

[Invasivecoyote]

I'm not to terribly upset about killing this motor. I mean really not; I beat the dog shit out of this motor! when I built it was just a junk yard 302. had 144k mile on it. I only got to put about 7k miles on it. but they were hard. full of track weekends and just dumb fun street driving. mostly wide open throttle shifting.
pulled it apart measured everything out. the mains were starting to show the lead babbitting on the bearings and the crank had a few grooves worn into it. so I turned it 10 over, I asked my machinist to go for bear minimum clearances. He got me in .001 thousands. checked my throw and I was happy it was minimum as well. checked out my rods and there were good as well.
I have yet to tear into the motor but my guess would be poor oiling on the main bearing. I used half grooved mains I wanted to use 3/4 grooved. my guess is when I turned the corner and I got on it hard, oil pump suck up air pocket and motor momentarily went without oil. I was using a melling oil pump which was clearanced and set up for higher flow and pressure.
I just find it hard to believe that I spun a lifter. I have bitchin spring pressure set at 160 seat. valves are good for 630 lift. and any one that know a f303 does not have crazy grind number built into it. very conservative cam. more torque than anything els. anyways thank you for the help on instructing me on how to upload pictures. maybe perhaps I will upload pics of a 70 pontiac transam 455 4 speed car i'm restoring. cut the trunk out and tig welding in a new one. then i have a 73 roadrunner clone i'm doing up. im glass blasting the engine bay. received a bad batch of red paint. and the maker of it is footing the bill for selling me bad paint.

[Carnut1]

If you were running a hv oil pump a 302 will suck the pan dry and drill bit the oil pump shaft with a seized oil pump soon as you hit 7000 rpm. Stock pan. Ask me how I know.

[Invasivecoyote]

posted the pics of the transam viewtopic.php?f=11&t=44898

[cjperformance]

If you were running a hv oil pump a 302 will suck the pan dry and drill bit the oil pump shaft with a seized oil pump soon as you hit 7000 rpm. Stock pan. Ask me how I know.

Sounds more like you had something get stuck in the oil pump actually !

[Invasivecoyote]

How much oil can a motor hold internally (I.E. inside the oil passages) while the motor is running at full rpm 6200 and above; Including uptop around the springs and in the lifter valley?

[cjperformance]

How much oil can a motor hold internally (I.E. inside the oil passages) while the motor is running at full rpm 6200 and above; Including uptop around the springs and in the lifter valley?

That of course depends on the oil drain back capacity of thw given engine. A stock ford cleveland is the worst ive dealt with and i have not measured the actual ammount in the condition you mention, BUT, that said they are not a problem until you have them at sustained high rpm AND in a high speed long corner and this is only due to the angle of the cylinder head oil drains v's corner g's.
Hi vol pumps do not 'drain/pump the sump dry' !

[Carnut1]

If you were running a hv oil pump a 302 will suck the pan dry and drill bit the oil pump shaft with a seized oil pump soon as you hit 7000 rpm. Stock pan. Ask me how I know.

Sounds more like you had something get stuck in the oil pump actually !

I had thought about that and inspected the oil pump(s) after they seized. Been running a standard volume pump for 20+ years on the same engine same combo and no problems.

[bmcdaniel]

I had the same issue with a 302 SBF running a high volume pump at high rpm. I think it was due to poor drainback from the heads and the front sump oil pan having poor oil control under acceleration. Same fix here, a standard volume pump took care of the problem. Probably was still right on the edge.