Hello all.
I'm wondering what are the best shafts to use for isky ductile iron rocker arms.

Hardened?

Chrome?

Stock stamped shafts?

Cam is relatively mild. 520ish.

Thanks

TRW used to make a very good replacement shaft that works well with those rockers.

You want hardened shafts, the ductiles will eat the shafts , also banana groove the shaft if it's not.

Isky or RAS shafts for the ductile iron rockers

Hard chrome shafts from RAS are the best IMO. They are thick wall and have a nice hard chrome treatment like a rod on a hydraulic ram.
Gus

i've had best luck with induction hardened.

Hard chrome is not the be all, end all. Because it is a coating it can peel and flake under various conditions. Any moisture will cause rust and the chrome bubbles and peels. Likewise, heat can cause it to peel and flake. If there happens to be a flaw in the plating, trouble will start right there.

Hard chrome is not necessary for a nodular iron rocker. The fact that the rockers and shafts are dissimilar metals (iron and steel) minimizes the chances of problems arising as long as they're well lubed.

FWIW, when the factory put iron rockers on various motors they used a plain ol' shaft - nothing fancy. And aftermarket iron rockers worked fine on stock shafts - the only problem with stockers being that they were thin walled and prone to being squeezed oval when tightening the hold downs, making rocker removal a [censored]! Hemis were the only motors with iron rockers that got bushings.

Buy a quality steel shaft and you'll do just fine.

Not looking to hijack but has anyone used the Hughes rocker shafts with ductile iron rockers ? I'm looking at crane ductile iron rockers for my 440. Thanks.

I think that the M.W and 340 T/A motors came with bushed ductile iron rockers also Maybe not You couldn't use a ductile iron rocker on a stock stamp steel rocker arm shaft, they would gall up and ruined the rockers after a while, been there done that, Made that mistake twice

I had two motors, one with Iskys and the other with Cranes. Both with stock shafts and tons of street miles with ZERO problems. Pretty sure only the hemi rockers were bushed.

Anyway, its a moot point since we're all advising a decent aftermarket shaft. My main point was that hard chrome is not a necessity in this case.

max wedge wasn't bushed.

TA rockers are not bushed...

I called RAS yesterday.
He's waiting on shafts right now.
I'm going to send the whole shooting match to him over the winter.

On a side note, how are you guys making the banana grooves? Free hand with a die grinder?

RAs will do all that is needed on your shafts

I know the ras shafts are grooved.

I'm looking to groove some production shafts to get me by.

Yeah, that's what I did..but I went with a straight cut, as opposed to the angled one (I can't imagine how you'd do an angled cut free-hand like that on a round surface)...haven't run the new setup yet (Crane ductile iron 1.6 ratio) so can't comment on whether that home-made bannana groving job worked or not.