...not a race package, just my weekend driver, still, it hurts me to see parts damaged, grrh...!!!

Anyways, OK, so half-way through last cruising season I decided to try out my Crane ductile iron 1.6 ratio rocker arms on my SB motor (360)...I measured the correct pushrod length, got me some Smith Bros stuff, beauties.

I assembled everything, the Cranes replacing my CompCams Mangun SS roller rockers (1420-16, 1.5 ratio).

Combo seemed to work great, no issues that I was aware of.

Alright...so the warm weather has finally arrived mid-west here, I pulled the valve covers off, pulled the rockers out, I wanted to have a look at the rocker nose to valve tip pattern...to my HORROR I actually found 2 separate valves with a visible amount of metal from the tip actually gone...I will post pics tomorrow, today I was far too "traumatized" by the darn experience...LOL!

The rocker arms are fine, but the valve tip has about 0.5 mm of metal gone in just a half of the tip, towards the exhaust. Worse yet, the pushrods cup ends have that tell-tale heat discoloration markings, and I'm looking at the two and concluding there was some seriously bad stuff with lack of oil/lubrication going on.

Strangely though all but these 2 valves are fine, although the rocker shafts themselves show similar blueing.

I am somewhat stumped, because I know I have always had good oil flow up to the top. I suspect at the moment that the oil lubrication holes in the Crane rockers are badly insufficient.

There are two:
1) top of the rocker arm
2) back-side, leading through the pushrod adjuster screw

#1 is supposed to provide lubrication to the valve tip through gravity feed I suppose, while #2 is supposed to provide cup/screw lubrication through gravity feed as well.

Anyways, I have a set of valve tip lash-caps handy. I will use them to cover up the tip damage. I know this is at best a real ugly fix, but this motor is all factory iron, way past it's age, and so pulling the heads to replace the two valves just makes no sense. This will require me to re-check the pushrods length, etc, etc...but I think I need to do something about the oiling holes in the rocker arms.

I seem to remember a thread a while back on this very topic...I searched high and low, nothing came up...went the "Internet wide/Google search engine" approach, did not find anything either...can anyone point me to this? That post talked about specific location where the additional oil passage should be drilled and which of the current two should be closed with a set-screw (I think...).

Thanks!

The number 2 hole isn't gravity fed. It gets full pressure when the valve is closed.

Don't know about the Crane ductile rockers but some of the gold W-2 rockers had the oil hole relocated to fix Chrysler's miss job with the oil holes in the shaft. With the valve closed, you should be able to stick a piece of wire through the rocker and into the shaft.

The hole in the rocker probably doesn't line up,with the hole in the shaft.

I'm pretty confident my suggestion will fall upon deaf ears........ But............ I'd just put back on the stuff that was working before and not worry about the 5-10hp you might be losing.

What rocker shafts are you using, do they have 'banana' grooves or just oiling holes ? In my experience non banana shafts will turn pushrods and other parts blue every time.

Well...you are absolutely right, on both accounts.

The fact that things got screwed up has me so pissed off that I am adamant about fixing the problem. I am always painfully slow in making changes just to make sure I did not miss any steps or miss-calculated something, so on a personal level this bugs the [censored] out of me. If anything maybe there is a "lesson learned" somewhere in there? lol

In the end though, I may very well go back to the working combo...I literally just want to get an extra season of cruising out of this combo.

I used a set of MP rocker shafts that I bought as part of the MP P4876343 W2 rocker arm set.

Now, these were non-offset, I measured this out, it was one of the first things I did. The shafts only had the oiling holes, I wanted to put the banana groves on them, so I did.

I replicated what my Hughes Engines banana shafts looked like (this is what I'm using on the 1.5 roller rockers), including the width of the banana grove itself. I then removed the end-plugs, cleaned them up, re-installed (new) plugs. Maybe this is causing the problem? I do not see how though, all rocker arm pairs have between 0.005-0.010 side clearance, nothing bigger than that.

One of my Mopar books shows the recommended oiling hole setup for these ductile iron rocker arms. They clearly show that there should be a direct feed onto the rocker arm nose/valve tip. Basically a hole drilled right below the rocker arm nose.


I will double check this. The positioning of the oiling holes in the shaft is such that most of the oil initially comes "out" towards the bottom of the rocker, in the highest pressure area I suppose? Whatever is dumped out of the shaft then travels up and around the rocker arm through a channel that is machined on the inside of the rocker arm body.

At least when I assembled this I did run the engine and confirmed by looking through the oil cap hole in the valve covers that the oil was in fact being "squirted" out of the top of the rocker arm oiling hole. I took that to mean that I had a positive confirmation the shaft to rocker arm oiling passages were working as expected.

I will take some photos today to illustrate all of this.

I don't recall ever using the 1.6's on a SB, but I've used the 1.5's several times........... Just used std shafts, no additional prep......... Never a problem.

I can say I never had issues with non offset rockers.,I only had issues with W-2 stuff. AFAIK (and I have a brand new set of shafts, stands and 1.6 rockers in the shop right now) Chrysler sent all the W-2 stuff out with the oiling holes in the T/A offset and height.

Like I said, it possible Crane moved the holes for some reason.

The W-2/5 stuff was a nightmare to oil until in relocated the holes.

Check for coil bind.

when you installed these. did you use motor oil or assembly lube?

A few years ago I asked Ray Barton and I think you also (Dwayne) about upping the rocker ratio for more lift. Both of you said the increase wasn't worth the possible problems versus the reward!

I did listen to my engine builder(Ray B.) and head porter.(Dwayne)

The moral of the story is if it's working why mess with it?

Second moral, which I have done is, lessons can be expensive, some cost more than others.

Don

Are both burnt push rods and valves on the same cylinder? What cylinder?

Just motor oil, straight 30.

Yes, well, consider that if we all were to take precisely that approach we would still be doing the very same thing that previous generations and generations before them did...LOL, so not trying to be a smart-ass about this, but I made it a point to move to a 1.6 ratio rocker arm to evaluate the difference that made (if any???) on a street car, having kept all other parameters the same...really, an attempt on my part to learn stuff.

Your 2nd point is well taken though...sometimes these lessons get expensive. I am glad I caught this as part of a routine "check before run" I do at the start of every cruising season.

On mine I soldered shut the OE holes in the side of the shaft (kept the OE bottom ones) & redrilled thru the rocker (.100") & on thru the shaft on the valve tip side and thru the shaft on the pushrod side (the rocker already has a hole on that side then I brazed shut the hole in the top & plugged the large access hole in the rocker on the pushrod side that is already there & I drill the new ones with the cam on base circle so there is some dwell time for a good flow.

As have I Dwayne. This is really a lot of trouble in my opinion, for a result that has been settled for over 40-50 years.....there is nothing new here, and thinking you are stretching the limits of engineering, well, thats just a pretty sad argument.You can argue a cam " designed" to take advantage of the 1.6 ratio might be a faster, more powerful combo.COULD you combo gain from the swap? Maybe, but in reality, who cares. Your going to gain nothing with 5HP in a street car.If you put it into coil bind, then you've done more damage. I would suggest making your time more useful, ( and fun) and put the old combo together, and go enjoy your car!

If you decide to take up stock eliminator or class racing, then you can break this stuff back out and then it will matter, but for now, I doubt its gonna be a beneficial use of time. Good luck.

Thanks for the feedback and input guys.

I do not recognize the alias names, ie. I have no idea "who is who" in our hobby/business, although I bet some of you make a living helping guys like me either get out of a problem spot, or avoid one altogether.

Still, I can't help but feel like some of the feedback just seems gloomy and downward pessimistic, as in '...duh, buddy, don't be a shmuck, stick to what works...', LOL, seriously, sorry no looking to bite the hand that feeds, just being blunt.

Look, you're not replying to someones who's built 10 different motors, all different combos, etc, etc. I am a hobby guy, I try to learn from what I do and sometimes - yes - those changes will push the boundry of what I deem to be "stretching the limits of engineering". Not quite sure what makes that desire to learn a "sad argument" CompWedgeEngines??? Remember, my limits of engineering are within the weekend-driver framework...very, very different from those of you who race these things.

For what it's worth, when I made this switch the motor did seem to wake up. The throttle was more responsive, the overall butt-meter seemed to suggest it pulled better. That is in a 360 motor, 10.5:1 static CR, Hughes Engine HE3844AL hydraulic flat tappet cam, 108 LSA, 238/244@0.050", .535/.540 lift @ 1.5 and .571/.576 @ 1.6 ratio. There absolutely was a different sound to the motor, especially @ idle, which is weird because I did not expect this at all. Having had some past cam change experience I would actually compare this to something along the lines of going to a step hotter cam.

I thought it was interesting to see this difference.

Anyways, appreciate the feedback regardless, all your points are noted. I will go back to check the coil-bind per mr2performance's suggestion, I did verify I had room before installing the 1.6 rockers.

Did you do the rocker ratio swap independant of the additional head porting ?

Before I got too carried away, I'd break out the priming tool and see what kind of flow from the rockers is actually coming out, and where it's going......especially the ones that had the issues.

Rapid Robert....do you have the angles of the oil holes in the shafts relative to the bolt holes?
and clean your PM box! LOL