One of the design qualities of the Y-Block V8 is its deep skirting which makes for a very rigid block for added strength in the bottom end. The drawback to this is it also makes for a heavy cylinder block. This being Ford’s first OHV engine, they had to feed oil to the rocker arm shafts through a passage from the center cam bearing. Because of the low detergents in oils of that era these passages would often become clogged giving the Y-Block a reputation for bad oiling to the top end. Ford came up with a stop gap measure for this problem by feeding oil via an external tube directly to the rocker shafts from the main oil gallery. Because of better oils today and a grooved center cam journal, a clean freshly rebuilt Y-Block should no longer have this problem and thus, no need for the external oiling tube.