Crossflow oil passages and dizzy gear wear

[Anonymous]

Got the crossflow back from the shop.

I noticed that there are what appear to be 3 oil passage holes inside the block along the lifters. One between 1 and 2 another between 3 and 4 and the last along 5 which is larger then a 27/64 drill bit. The first one between 1 and 2 is also directly above the dizzy shaft and it is maybe 3/4 the size of the last.

Does it make any sense to open that hole up as large as I can? My thought was that this would dump a little more oil on the dizzy shaft and may help out with the now famous crossflow gear wear problem.

 

[xctasy]

Go over wasa111's posts. He had a mod for the US 200 which copied the US Chevy 350 practice.

Look at that, and copy it.

I believe it will add oil supply without causing any problems.

I'm of the opinion Aussie cam and dissy gear failure is due to rockwell hardness or quality assurance issues with the cam supplier. Many very hard worked XF EFI's tend to break cams or distibutor drives for some reason. It could be an incipient knock condition which the stock spark control on the XF engines get very close to, or the more aggressive cam profile the EFI used. The whole engine is designed to run very close to knocking without holeing a piston, and that may shake everything. It is part of the reason Ford got great 20 imperial mpg figures in there 3400 pound XF's despite having just a 3-stage auto dating back to the 60's, and a body shape as adept as a brick.

Earlier X-flows don't seem to have a problem with cam and dsitributor wear.

 

[addo]

I agree, and disagree!

Yes, I agree that WSA is onto some good ideas with the hole reaming. you can always choke it down again if needed.

But I believe the drive gear failure is due to a mismatch of gear hobbing angle and cam drive helix angle/profile. If Ford changed their cam source around '88 or so, this makes good sense regarding the EFI unit failures, too.

 

[Anonymous]

Are any problems caused by fitting an EFI engine with a carby and leaving the old cam in place? That is what we did to ours, the new engine was originally EFi but is now running standard Weber and it drinks like a fish. It's also starting to smoke on startup.