Great. Using 30 year old stuff.


Keep doing wha you are doing. Sounds like you are happy.

Very happy and so are lots of other guys

Let's see a show of hands of guys on this board running n/a 800+hp combos who aren't running T&D, Jesel, or HS rockers that have bearings in them.......

Just because it's being done doesn't make it right. You can sit here and try and make me think that you agree with the way other guys do things. But I'd bet you don't.

Needle bearings on a reciprocating shaft is wrong, no matter who does it or for how long.

Could you explain why it is wrong to use needle bearing shaft rockers vs. a bushed shaft rocker?

T+d offer single shaft rockers for -1heads.....ran em on mine.

If your shafts are reciprocating, you're doing it WRONG!

Needle bearings need to roll, not reciprocate.

But it's been done forever so it's now correct.

Dirt bikes used to have bushings in the swing arm pivots. Then they figured it was cheaper to use a bearing and out went the bushing. The bearings never last very long.


So, I just don't do it, specially if you have a choice.

And a bushing will carry more load. Just lie in a roller lifter. Clean oil and a bushing is better than a needle bearing any day.

It's pretty safe to say that "most" of the higher hp mopar bb builds will be running solid roller lifters.

If you think about what's really happening with regards to whether the bearings are "rolling" or not....... Then you'd see it's really not as "wrong" as some seem to think it is(at least not in my mind).

IMO, for 95% of the builds people are doing....... Needle bearings in the rocker fulcrums are a non-issue.

As far as bushed or extruded aluminum or ductile iron or any other material that rides on a single shaft with no caged needle bearing rocker arms I would( and have ) use a torque wrench and measure the differences in rotational torque needed to turn the motor over with no spark plugs in it and then use a decent set of caged needle bearing roller rockers with everything else remaining the exact same on the motor and see how much loss of force is found, how much less rotational drag with the race rocker arms used today
I have four different motors in my shop now and one in each of the cars I own and race, one street motor has Crane extruded aluminum roller tip rocker arms on a single shaft stock type, two have sets of ductile iron single shafts, one race motor has a set of Harland Sharp roller rocker single shaft set up, the other race motor has a Jesel paired shaft steel roller rocker on it. The Jesel set up motor uses a noticeable less amount of force needed to keep it rotating over once it is spinning, it has 340 lbs of seat pressure and around 870 lbs open.
The street motors with the non roller rocker arms have the most resistance to keep rotating over with 140 to 160 lbs. on the seats and less than 400 lbs open pressure, they are flat tappet cam motors also
Bushed or non bushed rocker arms have a lot more contact surface on the shafts than the caged needle bearings do Pay me now or pay me later, later always cost more

Could the type of oiling...ie. external feed, full groove cam journal, pushrod oiling (constant feed) vs. standard half rotation via the stock cam journal (pulse/splash feed) to the rockers have a bearing (no pun intended) on a preferred rocker type?

Do you think pressurizing or pumping oil through the bushed rockers would change the rotational torque required to any measurable degree?

Either will work, even no bushing, just the rocker itself. Go for what has good service life, geometry, resonable cost, and what is availible for your combo. For what it's worth my roller tappets were changed from needle bearing to bushing. There was zero difference in performance.
Doug

I've tested this twice. Once on my engine, once on a customer engine who didn't mind funding it and sold what he didn't use.

On my engine I used 2 sets of T&D rockers, one with bearings and one with bushings. The other was a set of HS rockers a customer bought and a set of Cranes he had sitting there. Both roller engines. I had 340 on the seat and almost 900 over the nose. He had about 300 on the seat and 750ish over the nose.

I ran my engine on the dyno with the bearing rockers. Flogged the hell out of it. Then the bets started. How much power would I lose with no bearings. Since it was the same brand of rocker the swap was simple. Started pulling on it. Absolutely ZERO power loss. None. In fact in mid RPM it made 3-4 HP but it never lost. All the way to 8800. We put the bearing rockers back on the verify.


The customer engine was a bit more tricky. Between the different brands we had to correct geometry and the cranes were actually a bit more ratio when loaded. Crane measured about 1.58 and the HS were 1.51 and again, the results were the same. No power loss. None. His Cranes were up a small amount everywhere, but we felt that was possibly due to the ratio difference and the Cranes, when all said and done had a bit better geometry.


That's the only time I've ever tested it. That's the results. The interesting thing we both learned was that when running needle bearings, we had to chase the lash a bit. No bearings and the lash was much more consistent and didn't require adjusting as often.


As I looked into it more and more I realized I would never do bearings again if I had the choice. I know T&D will send them out bushed and T&D will send them out without a bushing.


Just what I found.

I will continue to use rockers with bearings in them, and not lose any sleep over it.

Most do. I'm not surprised.

Tens(hundreds?) of thousands of racers, running in every type of series imaginable, are all wrong, not to mention all the engineers that design the rockers, working for the most respected names in the industry....... And only you are correct.

Oh, like open chamber IRON heads and flat/mushroom tappet cams?? Pot calling the kettle black there Tim

Thanks for posting your test results.