Now you brought back memories. We had a new 57 Ford that supposedly had the Thunderbird engine so think its the same one. It was driven on the highway to commute 50 miles one way but the oil lines still plugged up. My dad used to carry an oil can to give the lifters an extra shot of oil when needed. It was still under warranty and I know the Ford garage worked on it a few times but don’t remember if they ever resolved it or not or put the by-pass lines on it. We traded it in a year for a 58 Chev.
@Bing. I wonder if the plugged oil passages might have been caused by the detergent oils that we had back then. I knew owners of Y block Fords who had the problem and other Y block Ford owners that didn’t have the problem. The Ford Y blocks had solid lifters, so the use of detergent oil was probably not necessary.
Possibly, I dunno what oil was used. It was a long time ago but the car only had about 5000 miles on it. That was one of my favorite cars though. I also remember it had an automatic choke problem. The choke would stick closed on warm up and stall until you pulled the air cleaner and opened up the choke. I was only 9 then so memory fades.
Just as an aside, we were at a resort in Canada with a steep gravel drive (like the one in another post only gravel). The car made it part way up with wheels spinning then stalled and ended up at the bottom again. The resort owner knew exactly what to do and opened the choke. Problem solved.
@Bing. 1957 may have been the first year Ford equipped the V8 with an automatic choke. I know the 1955_Ford V8 had a hand choke. All Ford 6 cylinder cars through 1964 had a hand choke. At any rate, Ford hadn’t had much experience with automatic chokes when the 1957 was made.
The 57 Fords were great driving cars but quality control was…a bit lacking. I went with a friend of mine to pick up their new 57 station wagon at the dealer.
When I got in the car I stepped on the aluminum door sill and it crushed under my foot. His father was understandably upset about that but his day got quickly got worse,
We were going about 40 when his father stepped on the gas to see what the pickup was like and there was a backfire and the smell of something burning.
He immediately stopped the car and when we tried to get out, none of the doors would unlock.
We watched with horror as a large brown spot spread across the white hood and smoke billowed out the edges.
By the time we got out the windows and got the forward tilting hood open we could see the air cleaner had fallen off and the front of the car was engulfed in flames.
Luckily, we were less than a mile from home. I don’t know if they got that car fixed or got another one the same color from the dealer because I was not welcome at their home for quite a while.
Probably because I kept bursting out laughing on the walk home.
I decided then and there that new cars don’t bring happiness.
There were actually 2 different 1957 Fords on two different wheelbases and were different overall lengths. The smaller models were the Custom and Custom 300. The larger models were the Fairlane and Fairlane 500. We had family friends that bought a new Fairlane 500 with the big interceptor engine and ran the car 7 years and over 100,000 miles. Another family friend bought a new Ford station wagon. He,had the 272 V8 engine and he had nothing but trouble from day 1. All Ford wagons were on the shorter Custom series wheelbase. I remember driving both the 1957 Ford and 1957 Chevrolet as new cars. IMHO the Chevrolet was,the better handling of the 2.
Those Y blocks sure didn’t live on, just as many of the early V8 designs are pretty much forgotten.
Right off of Wikipedia…In reference to the Y-Block Fords
“” It is known for having oiling problems in the rocker shafts due to the fact the oil first went to the crankshaft bearing, then to the camshaft bearings, then to the rocker shafts. This problem plagued the entire Y-block family and could be remedied by running a copper line from the oil pump to the rocker shafts.
The oiling problem was caused by the passage from the center cam bearing to the cylinder head being offset by an inch and too small. The motor oils of the era were low in detergents, but high in coke; when combined with short trips and infrequent oil changes, this led to blockage of this passage. This left the lower end with ample oil while the rocker shaft assemblies literally burned up. The external oiler kit essentially provided oil to the rocker shafts from the oil pressure port on the outside of the engine. “”
Blackbird
Yes @texases, Fords first OHV V-8 needed some rethinking just as Checrolet’s 1955 small block V-8. The later Y block derived 352 and 390 big block Fords proved to be quite reliable as did Chevrolet’s fully pressure lubed small block. Many American cars from the mid 50s proved to be inferior to earler models.
Finally, a discussion where there’s recognition of the fact that lots of cars made in “the old days” were really pretty poorly made and didn’t last. Of course there are quality designs that do last, like the Chevy small block V8, but there were also some truly terrible engines, and the suspension and braking was almost universally lousy. The idea of getting a new car every 2 or 3 years seemed normal, and after 40,000 or 50,000 miles things would often require major mechanical repair or replacement. No one would tolerate anything like that today.
Back in the mid 1950s, many people traded cars in after 2,or 3 years, so durability to the original owner was not a big concern. After the bad experience I had with the 1955 Pontiac V8 engine, I traded the car to my dad for his 1954 Buick. He was trading for a new car and was, offered more for the Pontiac than the Buick. That nail head V8 in the Buick was a very durable engine. At 160,000 miles when I sold the car, the heass, and pan had never been off the engine and it still didn’t use oil. Fortunately, that Buick was a standard transmission, so I didn’t have the problems that some had with the Dynaflow automatic transmissions of that time period.
As I remember reading the Consumer Reports surveys in the late 1950s, the GM cars tended to have better repair records,than the Ford products. The Oldsmobile and Cadillac had very good records as did the Rambler and,Studebaker. Some years for the Ford and Mercury weren’t very good.
The 272-292-312 “Y”-Blocks lost oil to the rockers when the center cam bearing, which had a hole that lined up to allow oil to flow up to the rockers, rotated in it’s bore and cut off the oil supply to the rockers. THAT’s when the external oil lines were rigged to supply oil to the rocker shafts. In 1956, the first Holly 4-barrel was used on the Thunderbird powered cars. It was and remains a VERY tricky carburetor to rebuild…It was retired after a couple of years for a greatly improved design…These engines had very poor intake port design…The ports were huge but they just would not flow…
The Ford Y block engines made it into pickup trucks and even some larger trucks. That engine seemed to do reasonably well in this application. Perhaps, because it had to run at a higher RPM in a truck application than in a car, more oil flowed through the passages and kept them cleared out.
I wonder if this 56 312 engine, on the rebuild they had to use a rope rear crankshaft seal rather than a more modern neoprene seal?
Meet Karol Miller…
Did you bring it back to your engine builder? What’s their comment about it?
That was interesting.
Great link C-man. Thanks.