I finally got everything back together, and it's wonderful. I cleared up my driveshaft rubbing by popping the driveshaft out, removing the seal, cutting it down and reinstalling everything. No more rubbing noises.
I put about 100 miles on the conversion, and all seemed well until the engine developed a 'squeak' that I had never heard before. It was coming from the area of the valve train, which seemed impossible... until I pulled the valve cover and found two things:
- The squeak was definitely from that area.
- There was no oil being tossed about.
The second one is what really concerned me. Normally, there should be a little bit of oil being expelled from the rocker shaft to lubricate the rocker arm bearings. This was not happening.
After asking around a bit, one of the questions I got was whether I was sure I had assembled the rocker assembly properly. I thought I had, but it was the easiest thing to check. So I pulled it apart. Everything seemed right--the oil inlet hole was in the right spot--but when I tried to blow some air through the assembly (to see what came out), I got... nothing.
Um.
This means that I had been driving for about 3100 miles without any oil at the top end of the engine.
At least I had something to diagnose. I pulled apart the rocker assembly on the bench, and sure enough... I had put the rocker shaft backwards so the oil hole was at the back, not the front of the engine.
It was this:
It should have been this:
Th oil hole is the second one from the right in the bottom picture. That's what lets oil into the rocker shaft and out to the rocker bearings.
Easy enough to fix. I reassembled the shaft (properly) and reinstalled. At startup, no more squeaks and I see a little bit of oil puddling around the valves.
I'm very fortunate that the wear in these is minimal. I couldn't feel any appreciable wear when running my thumbnail along the shaft. So I think I dodged a bullet.
Now I just need a recalibrated speedometer drive adapter. My reading is off by about 10%. In the meantime, I can drive!
