Hey All,
As you will see in the image I have my top end open.
I've been looking at the rocker shafts trying to come to terms with what lateral play the arms should have on the shaft, I started looking into the two oil gallery's, as noted in the image - red circles...
I stuck a long narrow plastic stick into one, fairly easily (towards the front of the engine)about 8 inches+, but the one closer to the firewall, I couldn't push the same tube into it more than an inch.
So I squirted some oil into the galley and it immediately overflowed...
Should both of these oil gallery's be clear and open?
Seems odd.
Cheers

 

Just the front are where the oil flows thru & the back = no oil passages in the block. The heads have one on either side so the heads can be installed in either L or R configuration.

 

Ahhhh....ok...
So the oil comes in through the front gallery, up into the rocker shaft through to the rockers etc....?

 

Yes sir!

 

Only 1 inlet for the whole rocker assembly....
What a terrible design!
Thanks for the input.

 

A design which lasted from 64 to 04 and strangely that was never an issue..

Issues with the Buick 215 based engine were pretty much cooling related with possible slipped sleeves/liners. Then of coarse the worse batch was the 4.6L found in 03-04 D2's. BMW didn't care about actually updating them to last. They slapped more emission control stuff on them, and actually made them run warmer to pass thru emissions.... The tooling for the engines was worn out by then, but honestly IMHO 4.6L Bosch design was just to much for it. The GEMS 4.6L setup was better and more durable because it ran cooler and didn't have all the added BMW SAI emission stuff.

I'm still personally a 3.9L 14CUX/4.0L GEMS/4.2L 14CUX/4.6L GEMS fan myself. Any Rover V8 will treat you right if you keep it cool, and keep up with oil changes. However a lot of 03-04 D2's were bought by people that didn't do either of those.