OK, got some pics to hopefully help answer some of the questions.

1) here is the full rocker arm shaft, stripped of the rocker arms, showing the home-made banana groves


I removed all the rocker arms off of my roller setup as well and compared the shafts side by side. Exactly the same configuration, oil passage holed drilled in the same spots, etc, etc. Is that maybe part of my problem? I do not actually have a factory (340 TA???) shaft handy to compare these to, and if the ductile iron rockers are supposed to be fed somewhat differently that maybe be part of my root cause?

2) this section shows the shaft blueing I mentioned, I think this is heat, yes?


3) finally here is a close-up of a couple of rocker arms, you can see that the direct oiling hole is right smack in the middle of the oiling grove that is machined on the inside of the rocker arm body, this I would expect should feed enough oil to the top oiling hole as well as the pushrod cup hole


I decided to modify the rocker arms to close up the top oiling hole and will drill a separate oil hole to squirt oil into the rocker arm nose as well as a into the pushrod cup. This happens to match the configuration I see on my CompCams rollers and the stuff my MP Engines book shows.

Just to clarify, we are looking at the bottom of those rocker shafts? IIRC those holes should be on the bottom facing the intake?

I dont have the angles & it varies significantly. I would do each one individually. what I did is dykem paint the shaft. On the bench, drilled the rocker on the valve side (right side of pic). On the eng, mockup/located each rocker/pair of rockers horizontally with shaft circular shims and or slight deburring of the holddowns to get .015 side clearance per pair (iirc) with the rocker contact area centered on the valve tips. made a circular mark in the dykem on the shaft thru the rocker with a thin scribe & drill that hole(s) in the shaft(s). On the pushrod side with adjusters out, the rocker is already drilled (confirm its dia) & just scribe thru to the shaft the same way then drill the hole(s) in the shaft on that side also. deburr the holes of course & braze/plug the top/outer side hole(s), the OE outer side hole on the pushrod side. just have the pushrods out & have the rocker contacting the valve to duplicate base circle for the proper clocking. I cleaned out 33 PM's! EDIT I don't think I missed anything I did but it was a time consuming deal.

Some other options...

Edit.. I wrote this before turning off my filter and seeing the pics you posted.

Ever thought of using std shafts and put a small groove on the inside diameter that would allow full 360 oiling full time to all the oil holes, like the 90s comp pro mag rockers, ive had them live with a .580 solid and #440 open.

As well vs plugging and relocating holes the china man has mastered the the engineering of 1.6 rockers that live. After a full season on a near .700 lift solid with K motion K800 springs, now on my truck with oem heads ive just at 4k miles on them with a street hydro roller without a glitch. There are simple bolt on and go 1.6-s in the marketplace.

Its very admirable trying to sort this out, id ask if you have a spare motor you could mock these up on and prime as mentioned while you do sort it out.

No one is saying you should not sort this out if thats your wish, but does you current build have the be the lamb that might get slaughtered when again a spare 318 in the corner and a primer rod could do the same, so it seems?

Its June, you could always run your last setup and sort this out over the winter.

Nothing sucks worse then a nice street ride sitting while others are cruising.

Lastly for no more then the 1.6 will net on your combo if you want a bit more edge from time to time, toss a 150 shot plate kit on it.

Please dont mis understand, we all like to do things differently and go off the path, I do and some have worked great but I also have a shelf full of nice looking parts that are so jacked they are best left on the shelf to look at.

If you are running head studs, did you open up the head bolt hole(s) where the oil comes up from the cam to the rocker shafts?
I usually also make the lower rocker shaft hole where the oil feeds into the shaft slightly larger too.
With the regular shafts, oil should flow around the hold down bolts no problem.
On my 360, I also grooved the #2 & #4 cam journals (small groove) so the rockers get some oil all the time.
On my big block T&D rockers they use a smaller diameter thick wall rocker shaft, and the hold down bolt should be machined down a bit for oil to flow around the bolt, otherwise the bolt blocks the oil flow through the shaft.

I just took off my filter to see your pics, them comps are good roller tip rockers, imo you might be giving up some gain be reverting back to the friction based tips of the 1.6 rockers.

Pull the comp off the shaft and look inside, if they are like mine, not only do they have a wide area for oil flow

Since oem rockers never seem to be a 1.5 its speculation of the 6-12hp increase with a roller tip with all else equal.

I applaud you for the things you do and the attention to detail but another thought is keep the good proven comps and just get a cam with a hair more lift.


Its 12:30 am but I had to go snap a pic here.... If your old cast units are like the pic Robert posted you can see vs the comp that has the groove on the inside, even one hole in the shaft would give pressure to all.

These rockers in the pics, just like your comps are nearly bulletproof, on a comp 295s cam, comp 977-6 springs shift points at 7400, unbushed and never any metal transfer from shaft to rocker body, never a hurt pushrod, and even winter thrashing at 20 degree startups.

IMO the simpler the better, those comps are great rockers and can do so much more then your asking from them, heck if you want to sell them let me know, ive even some tested, ready to bolt on china man rockers that would let you enjoy your summer cruising.

One last thought, have you measured the clearance you have with the cast rocker body to your shaft?

Yes you do have alot of heat and what looks like an abnormal wear pattern, refer to Roberts pic of the wear on that shaft, its where it should be vs what might be the full diameter on yours.

My comps are not on the as delivered shafts, they did get hot so I went to a shaft with a hair more room and probably a harder shaft as well and the problem was fixed.

Can you measure and post the dia. of your current shafts? And maybe the inside diameter of your cast rockers?

It is also a possibility you may not be getting enough oil into your shafts because of leakage because of the shaft spacers [seen in pix], I have read in the past about them causing oil leakage problems.

Yes, this was independant. I did the head porting and CR bump first...baselined with my CompCams 1.5 ratio roller rocker arms, then moved to the Crane 1.6 ratio.

It took me a while because once I measured the pushrod length I found out I needed new stuff, which is what I ordered from Smith Bros.

& I thought my OCD was bad!

IMO, the shafts being blue indicates the root cause of the problem is a lack of oil to the top end(or as mentioned, possibly excessive leakage around the stands).
Even if the holes to feed the valves and pushrods were in the completely wrong place, that would have no impact on how well the shafts are being lubed....... Which appears inadequate in the pics.

I think if you solve the issue that's causing the shafts to turn blue, the other problems will resolve themselves.

Robert, I farm/ranch during the day and also am my wife primary care giver so the nights are the only, mopar/shop time have, but I did trip out when I seen his old rockers were what I consider to be good rockers that can handle alot for being unbushed.

I find this situation interesting because ive never had a serious vt issue and I try some crazy things and the OP always shows alot of attention to detail in his posts concerning his motor/heads.

I've seen a lot of variance in how accurately drilled the cam journal oil passages are. It's on the 'must check' list now. A little off and you just get less oil, far off and next to none or none. Cam bearings seem to be consistent and always line up with the block well.

Dave,


Yes sir, I flipped the shaft upside to show the bannana groves I cut and the specific location of the oiling holes...

BUT

...the oiling holes and the groves are NOT pointing towards the intake when installed, instead they are pointing outwards, towards the valves.

So this looks to be opposite of where they should be aiming.

The shaft ends are marked with a notch, I set them up as follows:

1) driver side - the notch faces the front of the motor
2) pass side - the notch faces the rear of the motor

Wow, so this most trivial of mistakes (I think!) could be causing me the problem I'm seeing?

All the rebuild books I have reference the Driver's side as the LEFT ENGINE BANK. Therefore this is how I have set this up for both my CompCam roller rockers as well as these Crane pieces.

So here is a quote from 'How to How Rod Small Block Mopar Engines', p108: "...Note the notch on the end of hydraulic rocker shaft. It should be pointing to the centerline of the engine and towards the front of the engine on the left bank and to the rear on the right bank...".

Even my ancient HPBooks 'How to rebuild your Small-Block Mppar', p89: "...On driver's (left-hand) side cylinder bank, notch faces to the front of the vehicle. On opposite bank, notch faces rearward. Rocker shaft used with adjustable rockers has small flat spot in the same location...".

Sooo....which way to go here???

Something I noticed with the 1.6 rockers the adjuster is much farther down than the 1.5's. This won't help with your shaft heat, but if IIRC if the adjuster has more than two threads exposed on the bottom the adjuster can block the oil flow from the rocker body to the recessed portion in the middle of the adjuster. So no oil flows out of the center hole in the adjusters ball end.

and are those rocker shaft shims in the picture? Could the shims not be sealing well enough and dumping oil pressure? Also if you over tighten the rocker shaft bolts you can distort the shaft and get it hot.

I've always oriented the shafts so the oil holes are towards the valves.

Yes, the CompCams roller rockers that show in my photo are the 1.5 ratio rockers which I was previously using. You are right, they are nearly identical to the ones you show. They do have the channel/grove on the inside for the oil to flow.


Well, I am getting somewhat to a point where if I can not figure this out without having to spend $$$ on new stuff I probably will toss the 1.5 rockers back on and happily (hopefully) enjoy the season.

Yes, I used the shims to get me to an optimal (what I thought anyways, a pro I'm sure would be able to judge better) rocker arm nose to valve tip alignment. Since I was going from a roller to a sweep rocker I wanted to make sure I started the sweep in the right place to ideally center the rocker nose over the valve tip at max lift.

The shims might cause some oil to bleed off. To try to avert this I actually trimmed the shims so that the inner pieces were actually smaller (width wise) then the bottom pieces, thus forming a "saddle" if you will, so the parts match up as much as possible and leave very little free room that does not get taken up as the shaft bolts are tightened down. HughesEngines actually has a pretty good descritption of this, I went a little smaller than what they list to get better fit.

I torque down just about everything on my car with a torque wrench...the shafts get grade 8 bolts, 16 ft-lbs with SAE 30 oil.

Whats the diameter of the shim hole compared to the hold down bolt? Compared to the hole in the rocker shaft.