How much spring pressure can the Morels take?
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From: St.Louis, MO
How much spring pressure can the Morels take? I recently discovered the springs that came with my heads have 215 lbs of seated pressure and around 540 lbs of open pressure.
Immediately after the heads were installed we made 443 rwhp @ 6400 rpm. Afterwards I found a small intake leak. Three weeks and a couple hundred miles later we put the car back on the dyno. Instead of picking up power we lost a lot more up top. The car only made 430 rwhp @ 6400 rpm. We suspected valve float but when we took off one of the springs and measured the install height and closed/open pressures we were shocked to find 215 & 540 pounds of pressure. We were instructed to remove the shim that came with the springs but that only dropped the pressure down to around 200. Not surprisingly, removing the shims did not help.
My mechanic ordered me a set of Patriot Gold Extreme springs but he is concerned the lifters may already be collapsed. The cam is a billet cam so we are hoping it is ok.
If the lifters are damaged but the cam is not, I assume I will not find any metal in the oil filter? Is there any other way to tell if the lifters are damaged besides removing them? I have already spent over $1,000 extra on this project because of incorrect parts or parts not fitting and I can't afford another $1,000 of labor to have the lifters removed. Does anyone know how much spring pressure the Morels can tolerate? A search did not reveal any clear answers.
Immediately after the heads were installed we made 443 rwhp @ 6400 rpm. Afterwards I found a small intake leak. Three weeks and a couple hundred miles later we put the car back on the dyno. Instead of picking up power we lost a lot more up top. The car only made 430 rwhp @ 6400 rpm. We suspected valve float but when we took off one of the springs and measured the install height and closed/open pressures we were shocked to find 215 & 540 pounds of pressure. We were instructed to remove the shim that came with the springs but that only dropped the pressure down to around 200. Not surprisingly, removing the shims did not help.
My mechanic ordered me a set of Patriot Gold Extreme springs but he is concerned the lifters may already be collapsed. The cam is a billet cam so we are hoping it is ok.
If the lifters are damaged but the cam is not, I assume I will not find any metal in the oil filter? Is there any other way to tell if the lifters are damaged besides removing them? I have already spent over $1,000 extra on this project because of incorrect parts or parts not fitting and I can't afford another $1,000 of labor to have the lifters removed. Does anyone know how much spring pressure the Morels can tolerate? A search did not reveal any clear answers.
Thread Starter
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From: St.Louis, MO
Well just in case someone searches this thread in the future, I'll soon let you all know if my Morels survived 200+ miles and 20 dyno pulls with spring pressures as listed above. A friend and I pulled my motor out today. I'm going to disassemble it this week and send my lifters to Morel to be inspected. I'll post back in a few weeks when I get the results.
The offshore boat guys run them hard. I would contact Chris Staub and ask him, he can provide better information on these lifters. I seem to remember that was one of the major advantages of them, that they would tolerate pretty high spring loads but Chris would know for sure.
