Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines 230 rod bearing oil squirt notch?

For the second time, I got rod bearings that have no notch for the oil squirt hole on the rod cap. The short passage is there to squirt oil on the cam. The bearings do not have a matching notch on them, so if I assembled them straight out of the box, they would eliminate the oil squirt.

Now the question is.... what size should the notch on the bearing shell be? Same as the notch on the rod cap, or smaller? I have no old bearings to compare to, except the ones that came out, that I notched when I put them in. I don't want to lose too much oil pressure but don't want to compromise cam lobe lubrication either.

Jan

The oil spit hole in the rods is something that GM finally eliminated and is no longer necessary. Other manufacturers such as Ford also at one time had a similar design in rods on several of their engines and also later stopped making it a part of the connecting rod. Also, it isn't for oiling the cam, none of the rods are inline with the cam lobes to do that, the primary purpose for the spit holes was to spray oil to the underside of the piston crowns in an attempt to reduce emissions by cooling them.
So don't worry about it, its no longer considered relevant, thats why bearing companies don't include the notch any longer.

It's not aimed at the top, it shoots straight to the side where the cam is. At no point is it even close to spraying towards the piston. With the spinning motion while the engine is running, some of it may get whipped up splashing on the cylinder wall. BUT you're right, it completely misses each and every cam lobe too. I just took a peek. The only useful thing any of the squirters would hit, is the fuel pump lobe on the cam at #2 rod. And I'm using an electric pump, so it's useless for me anyway.
I was hoping they'd work for lubing the lobes, seeing as how my old cam had two worn out lobes...

Piston crown/wrist pin squirters would be nice, if I ever build a turbo 6... I wanted to build this bottom end as tough/thoroughly as possible (with my limited budget) so I would never need to open it again, even if I turbo it later. ARP bolts, oil return on the oil pan etc..

I may put a tiny notch on them anyway for peace of mind, I'm running a high volume pump.

Your also right that the oilers don't shoot toward the piston crowns. This did not accomplish the goal the engineers intended it to do, thats why they eliminated it from the bearings. No need to have peace of mind, their hundreds of thousands of dollars of R&D determined its not necessary.

Alright, thx Goes to show you engineers don't always get things right.... whoda thunk!