I have a 04 Dodge Durango with 84,000+ miles on it. Over the last few months ive had a lot of trouble with the rocker arms blowing off and clattering around in the engine compartments. At first the mechanics in my area are telling me its due to carbon build up in the cylinder’s, but i just recently had both head gaskets worked on and fixed and after receiving my truck back the rocker arm fell off again which totally eliminates the carbon issue. I’m at a loss and wondering if anybody has any other suggestions as to why these keep falling off or if anybody has had similiar issues and how they got fixed? any help with be great.
Which engine do you have? There are several options and some use push rods; others use lash adjusters, etc.
(That bit about carbon buildup causing this is a crock.)
I have a 4.7 engine - my mechanic is a saint and is working his butt off to find this problem, he’s called around and of course the dealerships wont answer until they can “look at it” but most answers were coming back with carbon buildup - but we’ve cleared that out of the equation. Would love to find an answer to stop the money trail going into this vehicle.
Sorry, but I totally disagree with the carbon buildup diagnosis.
Your engine uses small valve lash adusters instead of push rods (pretty common over the last number of years.
Faulty adjusters, low oil pressure, etc. could cause this problem but what should be researched here (and my memory is real fuzzy on this) is that some of these engines had faulty valve springs.
Some of the metal used was not quite right and this means the spring tension is weak or the valve spring is broken. If weak a visual inspection will not detect this and if broken it may be very hard to detect unless one really eyeballs them closely.
I think? there may be a Technical Service Bulletin out about this problem.
Over the years there have been a few other vehicles that will toss valve train parts (Cadillac big block engines, Nissan Z-cars, etc.) but this usually occurred only at high RPMs when valve float would occur so this would be unrelated to your problem.
Hope that helps.
(If this turns out to be a valve spring problem springs can be changed without cylinder head removal.)