Roller Rockers vs Explorer Valve Cover

[Grumpy]

you right .. oil dont pass UP that baffle tube.. BUT .. the push rods "squirt" small amounts of oil UP the tube and is sucked into the vacuum part of the TB and intake which will cause an oily buildup and could cause an TB to stick open some ,resulting in some unwanted sticking best thing to do is IF you remove the baffle ..... make one that is a little bit more low profile any see if that cures the prob....... if not then remove it and keep an eye on the oil level to make sure you do run low on oil and kill it (the engine) ..... lol

[cgrey8]

I think I also fixed that as well. The tube that connects right in front of the TB has a 1-way valve on it. So air can go into the engine, but the TB can't suck air and oil back up the filler neck, through the hose, and into the engine. There's a pic of it around here somewhere...it's actually a 1-way check-valve that pushes into a brake booster.

[Teddyzee]

I simply removed that baffle because the internet told me to.
With minutes of driving, the engine was ingesting waaay too much oil.

Some further internet research got me the rest of the story.

So, here's my solution: Yesterday, I was able to find the baffle, and, amazingly, the three tiny screws that hold it.

It will not clear the rockers in it's stock form. I flattened it with a BFH, trimmed it slightly, and now it clears with no issues. Best of all, ZERO oil in my throttlebody now.



On the right hand side of that pic, there is usually a sharp crease going upward, which I flattened.

Hope this helps someone!

[cgrey8]

Here's some pics of the thick gaskets:


In this pic, I'm holding up the old gasket so you can see the thickness difference:


The shadow under the original gasket makes it look thicker than it really is. But even holding them side-by-side, the difference is less than I thought it would be...but enough to make the difference and allow the stock covers to work. Of course, the covers will still need the side-reliefs OR the end rockers rounded off for clearance. But as you can see, the cover is mounted down flat to the gasket and as I spin the crank over, the movement of the rockers does not bind or tap on the cover that I can tell. As best I can tell, the max interference with the top of the cover is when the valves are closed. I have not tried the driver's side gasket or test-fit any other rockers yet. I'll probably get around to that tomorrow.

I'm hoping I don't run into any surprises. So far, things are looking encouraging. However, I was informed I might need .030" shims to go under the rockers to get the valvetrain geometry right on reassembly. I guess its possible that could cause the rockers to begin tapping the cover. Also any machining the machine shop does to the valve seats to get a 3/5 angle valve job onto the heads could cause the valve stems to raise up higher than they are now, and thus push the rockers higher. So I'm not out of the woods yet. If small changes like that actually do put the rockers into the cover, I'm hoping a BFH will be sufficient to fix those problems.

On a side note, the new valve springs came in:

I bought them from a guy that sells valvetrain components on eBay. He's just getting started up, so he was quite eager to share what he knew and what spring options he had available. So if you are in need of valvetrain components for a Ford or Chevy build, see how his prices fair for you:
http://alexsparts.com/

I got stronger springs, retainers, keepers, and viton valve seals for $120 including shipping, which I thought was a pretty good deal based on my research for the best price for what I was wanting. The springs normally give a 130lb seat pressure, but since this is a low RPM build where I want to minimize friction AND maximize longevity, I opted for keepers that increase the install height of the spring to get the install pressure closer to 100lb. Max lift pressure is still going to be close to 300lb so I doubt I'll have any issues with float. They aren't beehive springs like I wanted, but it turns out I'd have to machine the head spring seats to allow for the smaller diameter of the beehive springs. As well, they just wouldn't be a worthwhile improvement over std springs on a low-RPM build like this. Beehives are really meant for high RPM applications where conventional springs could start to dance or resonate causing issues. For an idle-5500RPM build like what I'm doing, I believe the money is better spent elsewhere.

[fordmike1]

I am running the Ford Racing 1.6 blue roller rockers with the stock Ex. valve covers and the stock steel valve cover gaskets and I have no fitment issues at all. The rockers clear even at full lift of my Ford E-cam.
On a side note that is not a bad deal on them valve springs but I have been using the Trick Flow kit and they come with the good valve stem seals and valve spring shims in their kit for just a few dollars more.

Here is the kit I have used about a half a dozen times now.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/TFS-2500100/

[cgrey8]

Well, I'm getting closer to needing to solve this problem. And this is what I found. Scorpion makes a low-interference version of their rockers. Notice the difference in shape and design.

My rockers:

CheaperScorpionRockers.jpg (4.21 KiB) Viewed 3333 times

Low interference design:

ReducedInterferenceScorpionRockers.jpg (4.39 KiB) Viewed 3333 times

The design is similar enough that it appears the difference in design is mostly in processing. Thus the low interference models are more expensive purely because more machining time has been spent on lowering the top of the rocker and shaping the edges. I can't see enough of the underside to see if there are other design differences. My point is, it doesn't seem there'll be a problem with doing my own machining to clearance where needed when they can make a similar rocker with far less metal than mine and still get the necessary strength. Add to that, my engine is not going to be a high RPM engine. The stress my rockers experience won't be nearly as high as an engine that would spin 6000+RPMs. I don't plan to ever get this engine above 6000. In fact, the intake, heads, and cam, simulate falling off around 5500 so I shouldn't need to take it that high.

In retrospect if I'd known about the differences in rockers and the significance, I would've just looked for the proper rockers. But I simply didn't know any better at the time. So since that's not what happened, I can either just shell out the money and get the correct rockers OR do the minor shaping on these when I do the lower intake porting. With the thick valve cover gaskets, the only shaping I'll need to do is on the sides of the end rockers. There's obviously plenty of material from a structural integrity standpoint to do what I need to do to get proper clearance. But I thought I'd share the images I'd found about the differences from the same MFG. If I do need to shape the tops, it'll be because shims pushed the height of the rockers higher than the "thick" gaskets clearanced for me. I'm hoping the machine shop did their job and got the valve seats & valves equalized so there will be no differences from valve to valve to require major shimming. I think .030" shims would be acceptable. But if I have to shim .060" or .090", that could easily cancel out the clearance I gleaned from the thicker gaskets thus forcing me to revisit the tops of all rockers.

[cgrey8]

Old thread, but I finally got around to knocking the corners off those rockers to clear my valve covers now that I'm getting the 331 together. Here's pics for anybody that's curious:

I just used a plain ole bastard file to knock the corners off. I held the rockers in a vise with them wrapped in a shop rag so the jaws of the vise didn't dent the rockers. From there, I just rounded the edges off with a file until I got plenty of clearance. As you can see, the clearance isn't anywhere near any critical parts of the rocker so I don't feel bad about taking this route at all.

Note, it did take the 3x thick valve cover gaskets along with this modification to get the rockers to fit under the stock Explorer covers. Once I get my pushrods in and installed, I'll get more pics of these on the engine with those modified valve covers in the above pictures to show how they are definitely clearanced back far enough as compared with the way they were with the sharp corners.

[MalcolmV8]

Oh man I remember this issue from way back when. I can't say I would have done that to the rockers. Why not just cut a small patch on each of the four corners and weld a small bulge for clearance?

[cgrey8]

Without a welder AND skill to ensure the weld wouldn't leak, this was easier. I got my concernns eased by the machinist who had some of the same exact brand rockers in his shop that he says he's done similar things to many times on much higher RPM applications than mine and had no issue. So for daily driving duty with only the occasional high RPM WOT, it should be just fine. But yeah my initial thought was...that's just not right. It certainly isn't pretty. But they'll be under valve covers. Pretty doesn't really matter once the covers are on.