I’ve got a customer needing adjustable rockers on his 440 Source stealth alum heads. The last build with hydraulic rollers and aluminum rockers from Mancini were pretty noisy. A google search turns up lots of differ choices. I’ve never had any issues with my TA rockers on a street car with a stock shaft. It is banana grooved though. Anyone got any advice on which ones to stay away from? I see cheap ones from speedmaster. He won’t go for the $1000 set from RAS, I’m sure. It won’t have high seat pressures but probably a flat hydraulic lifter. I’ve liked to old Isky designs as long as is one a hardened shaft. Seems to me that bushed is better than roller for oiling and street use. Any suggestions is appreciated.

bushed is better than roller for oiling and street use

yes

440 source just came out with some like the oem that are adjustable for the big block

I've been running the new 440 source ones all summer...

Solid lifter old camshaft with a 314 duration and 574 lift...

No issues whatsoever and they have been ran hard a good bit...

Good luck. Good rocker arms are now super expensive. Cheap rocker arms are often a problem just waiting to happen. You can cheat a little bit if it is a low RPM street engine that doesn't have much spring pressure but you still need to be careful. The old nodular iron design was good for that application but Isky and Crane both stopped making them. We usually go with Comp steel rocker arms for the street guys and T&D for the race guys. Those two designs both work really well but they are a lot more expensive now than they used to be.

Thanks Andy. The problems I’ve seen in the past with both Crane and Isky were when they were put on stock shafts. Iron to steel oem was just asking for trouble. So all these cheap ones scare me. The comp ones are out of stock but 440 source makes a new roller tipped steel that is bushed that looks nice. Should I be worried about the shafts and buy better shafts with bananas grooves?

Let's clear something up about those old Isky and Crane rockers. The issue was not so much that they weren't bushed and it was "iron on steel", in fact the early 413 and 426 Max Wedge motors all came with unbushed iron adjustable rockers. The "root" of the problem was the thin stock shafts that went oval after they'd been off and on a couple times or were overtightened and subsequently caused the rockers to bind and gall the shafts and rockers. The same would have occurred had they been bushed. The solution back in the day was simple and inexpensive - you bought a set of TRW replacement shafts which were both thicker and machined (which stock shafts were not) and rumout had it they were worth 10 HP just because they were more stable. Even today, with a good set of shafts there is no need to shy away from a nice set of Iskys or Cranes for anything but a high lift race cam.

You didn't say how much cam he is running, but I get the impression he's not trying to build a Pro Mod engine. Since he has Stealth heads those stainless roller rockers from 440 Source would probably be a good bet. The price is right, the quality looks good. Sure, we don't have 10 years of history with them running .750" lift cams turning 8,000 rpms, but I get the impression that's not what your customer is wanting to do. I mocked up the same setup with stock pushrods and hydraulic lifters and it looked ok to me. By the way, I prefer bushed rockers also.

This is an excellent post. I have a set of iron Crane's that have been on the same engine since 1985. Zero issues with galling.

Melling makes a stock replacement shaft that is more than twice the thickness of a stock B/RB shaft. I just swapped out a set of Crane Gold's that had stock shafts to the Melling shafts for an engine I built last year.

Every brand of Mopar hydraulic roller lifters I have used, not many sets, have sounded a lot like the old SB Chevy .030-.030 Duntov solid lifer cams and lifters

This thread is about ROCKERS

That makes sense. The ones I’ve seen problems with are all just placed on stock shafts. Good info.

Rick, is the shaft in the picture the one that comes with 440 source rockers? It looks good and thick.

I actually mentioned I was using flat tippets because the last set of hyd rollers lifters were too noisy for my customer.

His customers problem is valve train noise with aftermarket hydraulic roller lifters, same as I had years ago with them

I actually experienced a lot of years of solid performance out of a set of ProComp bushed stainless steel rockers. They were on a solid flat tappet setup though with relatively low spring pressures. They looked a lot like the 440Source stainless ones. For anything less than 450 lbs, I’d feel pretty good with those.
For anything with more than 500 - 550 lbs of open pressure, don’t scrimp on rockers.

This is a street car with relatively low seat pressures. It has power brakes so 14-15” of vacuum is my goal. I use Bullet cams and Johnson lifters exclusively now. I’ve had good luck with them.

My experience with the set I show above was also on a set of Stealth heads. The geometry was pretty good. It was on a solid flat tappet, so I did adjustments annually; They never moved. That combo saw lots of race duty, shifting at 6200.
I see them currently on eBag for around $200. Mild Hydraulic cam….. I’d go that direction again in a heartbeat with no reservations. Spend the saved $500 somewhere else.

Reading it almost sounds like 2 different builds , but good info on the noise.

I wonder what is actually making the noise ?

I bought a car with an already rebuilt engine that came with roller tip rocker arms, and they made some light clattering noise you could hear with the hood open at idle. I later put cast aluminum valve covers on it, and those rocker arms really made noise after that. It was like a sewing machine buzzing sound at steady throttle from inside the car. Motor ran perfectly the whole time I had it, but it just made obnoxious noises at cruise speeds. Some of the noise that comes with any roller valvetrain parts I don't think can fully be eliminated, and aluminum valve covers can definitely magnify the volume.

If you watch some of the YouTube videos by Powell Machine, and some others, they talk about certain types of cam lobe profiles that are out there that can make life harder on roller lifters as well so maybe that is where some of these noise complaints arise from?

The build that made noise was a mild hyd roller cam with a comp cam but real good lifters( I forgot the name) and alum roller rockers from Mancini. I’m sure the ramp speed of the cam had something to do with the noise. It had stock valve covers. It was basically the same motor I’m building right now. It’s a stock looking 440, .030 over with a street cam and about 15” of vacuum to work power brakes. I’m using Stealth alum heads.

aftermarket rockers with adjusting screws usually contact the oil baffle in the stock valve covers making noise. Especially with hydraulics on mock up they collapse showing clearance then when primed/running they pump up and hit.

Where’s a good source for the Melling shafts?

Yes, I had to ding mine in places.

I had got mine from Summit, but I see they're not listed now. I will look up the part number.

https://www.manciniracing.com/marabduirroa.html

$309.99/set, Maxie-style. Guess someone's making them again.

Well. Here’s my take on these. First off, they are prob the same ones that 440 source sells for $289. They are made in China, as are the shafts. I’ve seen way too many Chinese parts fail due to poor metal content and poor machine work. For $300, I’m thinking piss poor quality on these. Now I’ve been looking through my collection of rocker arms that I have collected over the years. I’ve got multiple sets of Isky, Cranes and even one Mopar Performance ( which are probably Cranes). Most came off of motors that I collected or parts stashes from friends. Every set has most of the rockers and shafts galled up. One set of Cranes has very few runs on them with a .580 lift solid cam. They are terrible. The Mopar Performance set might have chrome shafts. They are galled as well. The lskys are the better of the two. They are thicker around the shaft so they should stay round more under high loads. They may be better iron, too. What all these have in common is that they appear to all be on stock shafts. Seems like I remember something about putting thicker TRW replacements shafts on back in the day. I’m uncertain if these shafts had the banana grooves for better oiling.

Now I’ve got plenty of experience with my TA motors with iron rockers and factory shafts with BANANA GROOVES. I’ve had no galling. I’m assuming the shafts may be hardened or thicker. They don’t look chromed. Now, this is with lots of street miles and only a mile cam. Hemis have banana grooves and I think they are bushed from the factory. That I can’t remember. I’ll have to look at the shop later.

I’ve got a friend who just sent off a set of oem factory iron rockers from a 426 wedge to Rocker Arms Service. He had them bushed. They turned down the original shafts, put banana grooves in them and then hard chromed them. I don’t know if they are thicker than a regular shaft or not. I wanted him to just get a really good shaft from someone else that was hard with banana grooves but he took their advice. I know they are making better shafts now and selling them with their new roller rockers. However, even though he got the oem rockers for free, he has $600 in these rebuilt ones. They do not have the hardened tips like the Isky’s do either.

Lastly, the old Isky and Cranes used the same stupid springs and oem spacers just like these new cheap ones have. The springs are steel and wear the rockers in the middle. The tension makes the rockers really wear on that tiny spot that contacts the factory hold down. I’ve got plenty of evidence to support that in my collection of rockers. So toss those and buy the spacers and better hold downs. Now you are pretty close to the cost of the bushed roller tipped ones from 440 source. You still don’t get a banana grooved shaft even with those. My question is should recommend a better shaft to my customers even though these bushed rockers come with shafts. I don’t like problems with parts comebacks.

First of all, when I installed my Iskys back around 1974 I had to cut the tabs off of the spacers/holddowns to get the the rockers to align with the valves. The rockers are long gone but I still have the holddowns !! As for those springs, yes they really bind up the rockers. You can barely rotate a rocker by hand with them in place, On the other hand, Hemis used them from the very beginning on Gen I's and had no issues. Lighter springs I think. But the solution was easy enough ... replace the springs with bronze bushings of the correct length and shim as needed. The wear from the holddowns was still a minor issue but solved with a steel shim on each side.

I will say this about springs thouigh, they take the hassle out of trying to get clearance between the rockers. It literally takes me hours to set up a set of big block rockers because everything on the shaft moves. If the aftermarket spacers were a tighter fit on the bolts or studs so they had no side-to-side movement it would make life a whole lot easier.

I agree on all points.

Be advised the last production runs of Crane rockers(also sold by Mopar Performance) before they went bankrupt was very bad for excessive wear due to poor hardening.
Since the Iskys are no longer available I have been using the Harland/Sharp rockers without any issues.
When I assemble the rockers and shafts before mounting on the engine I use an older head just as a dummy mockup to get the rocker to valve stem alignment optimized.
I also have a bag of the shaft spacers that often need a slight thickness tweak by the dremel as to adjust clearance. Also it is recommended
that when mounting and torqueing down the shaft be sure to recheck the rocker to stem alignment as sometime it can change.

Just my $0.02....

I grooved my shafts years ago with a thin cut off wheel. Polished off the burrs and sent it. Still going today 20 some odd years later. They've been used with 2 differnt cams, hydrauic and a solid.
Doug

You know, that’s not a bad idea. I’m surprised I had not thought of that. As long as it’s not hard chromed, I guess it would work. I talked to the old guys at Rocker Arm Unlimited yesterday about shafts and rockers. I can’t use their setup that they sell because it’s a 1.6 ratio. This motor I’m going to work on was not built by me and I have no idea if it was put together correctly and if piston to valve and head clearance was even checked. He already told me he used junk pistons in my opinion, so he may be in big trouble.

I specifically asked him about banana grooving the shaft and they recommend it as well. He said the oil fills up the groove in the middle of the rocker and never gets out to the sides of the rocker and that is where it always galls up the shaft. He is right. I have several old sets just like that. I told him I found several shafts that had the groove along the centerline of the shaft and I do not like the fact that the groove is at the exact spot of all the load and the factory spread out the loss of the shaft material by cutting the groove at an angle on the shaft. He said that was the best and correct way to banana groove a shaft. I asked him if I was just being picky about the groove and he just laughed and said,” yes you are , but that is the correct way to groove the shaft”.

He is going to get me some shafts made to my specifications. He was very helpful.

426 Hemi shafts are grooved for a reason.

Glad I bought ductile irons years ago when they were easy to find and not super expensive after reading the replies . The Isky's I have I bought in 1988ish and never used them, I have a set of cranes too. I bought spares and shims to ditch the springs between them.

Its funny, look at the wording and someone copied someone here.....lol....either 440 source or Mancini. Lets face it people, at $300 give or take for a set of ductile rockers in 2025, With SHAFTS, I would hope most experienced guys here know what the deal is . Rocker arms is NEVER the place to skimp on money. It almost always end up in painful failure. I know.... I know... someone is going to respond to me that they have a bazillion " hard driven" miles and well over 10 years ( its like when someone says they have a race motor that they have been running for 20 years without failure, but they fail to mention its only made 10 passes in those 20 years) on their 440 Source or other brand Chinese rocker arms. I get it, some people aren't going to spend the cash on the better product. However , just be honest and fully aware of what your purchasing. It costs $200 and up for just a decent set of replacement shafts. Rocker shafts are actually harder to make than people think because of the hardening differences around the bolt holes, which is tricky to get right. Ive seen a LOT of Mopar engines and worked on a crap ton of them. 99% of the time when it was an issue with the ductile rockers ( I like the old Crane and Isky ductiles for the street cars etc) it was because people didn't torque the fasteners right. Either they egged the shafts because everyone knows a 3/8 bolt needs to be torqued to at least 100 ft lbs, or, they were torqued to like 15#, came loose, then snapped a shaft, right next to a bolt hole.Improper selection was often the other cause of failure. They didnt like 900# of spring pressure. Buyer beware. Buy the best rocker you can afford when you can.

I have a NOS set around somewhere I bought when I was 18 before they were NOS.

To be clear, when I posted on the Mancini rocker setup, I'm not advocating or endorsing them.
More to the point of "cheap stuff is $300" and that they are apparently available.
Even my performance street motors have at least hardened shafts, banana cuts, and HS rockers - either bearings or bushed.

I will clarify as well since I responded to your post , but I wasn't thinking you were advocating them. I understood your mention.

Rocker set ups will always be a " pinch point" in peoples builds due to the rising costs, but far too often, whats saved up front, costs more later in that department.

Yep, Dremel is your friend

I picked up a set of the Cranes for my 440 with Stealth heads. Sent them to https://www.rockerarms.com/ down in Redding, Ca. For $550 they supplied new thicker chromed shafts with banana grooves for oil, bushed the rocker arms with bronze bushings and resurfaced the wear tips of the rockers. Also included were the needed shims to replace the springs Crane used between the rockers. Damned fine pieces for my use.

Those look like the original OEM Mopar and the earlier good Isky rockers, not like the cheaper Ersons, Cranes and other cheaper ones

Yep, if those have the hardened pad on them they are Iskys. If not, old mopars.