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I purchased my '97 TA several years ago but haven't had the chance to do much to it since then. This winter I'm doing several upgrades and removed the valve covers to make long tube installation easier. What I found was.... odd. There appeared to be four aftermarket roller rockers on the passenger side but all the other rocker arms appeared to be stock. And it was two different brands. What's up with that? I'm guessing I should just convert them all over to a 1.6 rr. I'm tempted to use this opportunity to pull the intake and heads to check the condition. Also, on the inside of the valve covers, in the corners, was a whitish sludge. I'm not sure what that indicates. Eventually I'd like to rebuild/replace the motor with a 383, getting the heads and intake ported, etc, but wasn't planning on doing that now. I've got new off-road long tubes and exhaust, new clutch, but now I'm afraid I'll need to be spending more money. Any insights into any of this? Pictures below.
That whitish sludge is definetly the fat off all the mustang's that car has devoured. That's a crazy surprise to find. I would be a little concerned cause I would suspect something grenaded then they fixed it cheap as possible and sold the car. That's the only reason I'd think someone would do something like that
That's a classic case of losing/breaking some parts and then grabbing (literally) whatever they had laying around the shop to address the issue. No idea what the fatty looking gunk is. Perhaps condensate mixed with oil vapor, but that's a flat-out guess.
Maybe the old owner wanted just a liiiiiitle bit of performance, not too much.
Crazy that somebody would do that. Why not put stockers back in. What kind of back story did you get on the car?
i didnt really get any backstory. It came from a used car dealer. It seemed to run okay-enough. It was always intended to be a project car, just wasn’t planning on doing everything at once. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts so far.
i didnt really get any backstory. It came from a used car dealer. It seemed to run okay-enough. It was always intended to be a project car, just wasn’t planning on doing everything at once. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts so far.
if you got the money i would maybe think of doing a cam swap and replacing the springs, pushrods, rockers, etc.. so you know whats going on in there.
If I were going to do rockers, pushrods, cam, springs, etc what should I go with? Eventually the plan was to build a 383. Is there stuff out there that would be good for a mildly modified street car and still work on a built 383? Or would I be buying everything all over again? It might end up being a few years for the engine build, so maybe getting a more aggressive cam and rockers and doing a mild port on the heads and intake would suffice for now. Not a huge dollar loss if I can't reuse it. I don't know much about valvetrains. What brand/style should I be looking to buy?
Has the motor been sitting for a long time, the heads sure look clean as in not much oil showing in the valley of the heads, I believe I do see some on the rockers.
Has the motor been sitting for a long time, the heads sure look clean as in not much oil showing in the valley of the heads, I believe I do see some on the rockers.
It has about 112k miles on it but hasn't been driven more than 1,000 miles/year for the last 4 years or so. I can't be certain that anything on the car is stock or original. They may be newer heads but I've never had any problems with oil usage or leaks.
01-23-2019, 07:45 PM
Removed my valve covers and found.... 
