Jerry/Rick;
I use a torque wrench and 30wt motor
oil for lube on the bolt threads/head, torqued to 60 lbs in 2 stages....all other rod bolts were still torqued down...the "good rod bolt" may have come out first, I just don't have any way to prove/disprove that, but could certainly believe it happened that way....
I've never had an
oil pressure problem, I run an 8 qt. Canton Road Race pan with 4 "trap doors", windage tray in the pan and side crank scraper and with the remote filter and
oil cooler/12an lines, the set-up holds a total of 10.5 quarts of Mobil 1
synthetic oil...
During the intial build, I inquired with a number of racers about an accusump and to my surprise maybe 10% use one.... I talked with a bunch of veteran vintage road racers some running Roush built motors (25 to 30k a pop) and they do not use any kind of accusump. they run the same set-up I'm running and even the same Melling oil pump...
My idle oil pressure once warmed up is about 40 psi and while on track stays between 50psi and 60psi depending on my rpms...
Since the bearing all look perfect and have since the intial build, oiling has not been an issue. The motor has been apart once after the first 2 season for rings/bearing. Then this past summer I decided to upgrade to the BOSS 302 block and removed everything from my old block and put in the new BOSS block (put in new rings/bearing again,old ones looked good) and fought a rear oil leak for most of the year, so a month or so ago, I decided to go back to my old block and took everything out of the BOSS block and re-installed in the factory block. I then ran it at least 2 hours on a run-in stand in my shop before putting it back in the car. After in the car, it had about another hour of run time before the motor broke......
The pictures may not show it, but there are plenty of threads on the main studs, the nut is nowhere close to running out of threads when torqued down.
It would be nice to positively know what failed or caused the failure, but with the running time on the motor, I'm not complaining, I figure I got my money's worth of use out of it... I ran it a lot and sometimes very hard and up til now, never missed a beat...Last summer in 100+ degree heat after a tight 20 minute race, I came in with my water temp at 190 and oil temp at 265!!!!!!!! I was in a tight race and points battle and ran as hard as I could for the full 20 minute race......
Normal race/open track conditions, my water temp never exceeds 185 and oil temp will vary from 220 to 240.....
It has been a good motor and I'm gonna build another using the very same parts and pieces (new of course),that's how much I like the performance and value of this motor.......
David