SupahRich

iTrader: (14)

Good News:

The rain finally cleared long enough today to get that god awful bolt on the back of the pass. side coilpack bracket off. I cursed the bolt before I proceeded to toss it as far as possible into a nearby field.

Bad News:

I pulled the valve cover and was able to tell which pushrod was bent by seeing where it had worn a small notch into the head . I took the rocker off and pull the pushrod only to have half of it in my hand. I can look down in to the head and see the other half down there but I can't reach it with my fingers of course.

Does anyone have any idea how to get that half out? I did a search on here and CamaroZ28.com but I couldn't find any info on how to remove it, only that people had found broken pushrods before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm hoping to have this sucker up and running in the next couple of hours!

ss rally red

iTrader: (8)

Try a pen magnet.

MECHAM

iTrader: (4)

yep...do anything u can to get it out. turn the car upside down if need be

SupahRich

iTrader: (14)

Thanks guys My neighbor had one that I could borrow, everythings buttoned back up and running great now. It didn't take long at all to re-install everything minus the rear bracket bolt, maybe 10 minutes if that? I put the rear plug wire back on the coil before I slid it back in place on top of the valve cover, that saved a lot of time.

I only managed to get 1 bloody knuckle and about 2 dozen scratches from those damn clips or whatever they are just under the cowl, they're sharp as hell. , what the hell are they for anyways? The quick pic I snapped is sort of blurry, sorry. The last one is a shot of the pushrod, I did a pretty good job on snapping it

Ferocity02

iTrader: (60)

Wow! I havent see one break in half before. Glad you got it fixed and running again. And ya, those spikes are a bitch.

I'm honored to have my pushrods in your engine They won't let you down

Z28Venom

iTrader: (13)

Yep.. I have permanent tattoos from those damn tabs.. I won't go anywhere near my engine bay now without a set of Mechanix gloves..

LS1 Engine Bays are hazardous work areas...

SupahRich

iTrader: (14)

I was just getting ready to PM to let you know the pushrods came in yesterday It started raining on me yesterday so I had to put it off until today. I really appreciate it, you're a great seller

BTW: It was really odd, the pushrod technically was snapped in half BUT the two halves were balanced on top of each other. I'm guessing the pressure from the rocker kept it together? When I pulled the top piece out, the bottom was still standing straight up. The top piece was still under the rocker and in place as if it was still intact when I first pulled the cover.

I also know what I'm going to do during my 4th of July vacation time.

1) Coil Pack Relocation Mod
2) Clean/Paint Valve Covers
3) Remove A.I.R and EGR crap

That'll make future pushrod swaps so much easier as well as plug/wire changes AND the engine bay will look so much cleaner.

My98t/a

I had a pushrod break on me just last week. Good thing it was just about time to do a cam install. My local shop had to do the same thing to get half of it out. Glad to see nothing got majorly scrapped.

Krab

iTrader: (28)

You snapped that **** up good. For future reference, just push those tabs holding the weatherstripping at the top of the cowl out with something flat (like a small piece of wood) and that will save you about 20 scratches to your forearms.

a98ws6

iTrader: (48)

I did the same exact thing! Question though. when the pushrod wears a notch in the head from being bent, are the heads still good? ithink they are because the pushrods dont ride on the heads?

distortion_69

iTrader: (20)

The heads are still good. You have guides plates for the pushrods to run through. The guy who owned my car before me wallowed out my holes as well.

Peace,
Josh

Naked AV

A little off topic, but someone told me not to get new chromoly pushrods just because they wouldn't break if something like this happened - that the valves would get screwed up instead, and it's much less expensive to replace a rod than to have to deal with valves. Essentially, he was recommending using stock pushrods as 'fuses'.

Does this sound right?

SupahRich

iTrader: (14)

That's the advice that I've seen people post on pretty much all of the boards I hang out on I plan on running stock pushrods until I do a full valvetrain upgrade... I don't mind replacing a pushrod here and there since they're so cheap and easy to replace.

Of course I'm sure there are some people out there using hardened or other aftermarket pushrods no problem.