Update on grease for the Warner 145. After my engine swallowed an exhaust valve two years ago, my protocol for greasing this engine has gone through a tremendous evaluation. I spent a great deal of time with my engine overhauler. While his forte is the Warner 165, he did some research on greases and their stability in the 145. He rebuilt my engine, ran it with a new cocktail of greases, evaluated the parts and ran it some more. Here is what he found and what I now do:
On the rocker springs I use John Deere cornhead grease. It has a lower melting point, which is what you want on the springs and valve stems. I made an adapter for my grease gun that adapts a 1/8” copper tube to it so I can squirt between the spring coils directly onto the inner spring and valve stem.
For the rocker rollers and rocker bearings I use Lucas Sticky Red grease. This stuff is amazing. It’s really sticky and seems to be perfect for this application on the rollers and bearings.
Finally, I started greasing my new overhaul every 5 hours and have now extended it to 7 hours. My overhauler says I could probably go 10 hours between grease jobs. Working up to that.