project68e

you should stop tightening when you cannot spin the pushrod by hand anymore, given that your hands are not all greasy.

I will be a little more descriptive here so bear with me:

so I recently rebuilt my entire engine. due to the decking of the block and heads I went with head gaskets that were .012" thicker then the standard .040" head gasket...put my stock rods back in and had some pretty bad valve clacking. (I could easily spin the rods by hand)
so I checked my valve length and it came out to a measured length of 6.250"...so I thought cool, 6.272" rods will correct my issue. a little longer then I needed but that all could have been soaked up by the lifter preload tolerances which are between .020"-.060".
well when I got the new rods advertised at (6.272") they were also 6.250". I didn't want a custom set of rods so I ended up going with trick flows 6.300. I called summit and they had someone call trick flow and trick flow verified that the actual measured length was around 6.282" so again I thought I would be in the clear. well the rods came in and they measured at 6.320" so longer then trick flow had said so now I needed shims.
my next step was to do the math and substitute with shims. I did the math on paper then put them on. turns out they still needed an extra .020. so I added an extra shim and was good to go. BTW I couldn't turn the rod at all by hand "and I had only hand tightened the rocker bolt" so im not sure that technique (spinning the rod) will always work and keep a quite valve train.
my next piece of advice. do the numbers on paper with .010" to .030" increments starting lowest to highest of course. get your cam on base lobe. easiest way (for me anyways) to do that is pull my distributor cap off and rotated the engine and use my rotor for indication of which cyl your on, go a hair past (make up for the timing). if your really worried about making sure your on your base lobe go over to harbor freight and get a leak down tester, that will guarantee your on your base lobe. move crank to what you think is base lobe. install rockers and rods (what ever procedure you go with) then check with leak down tester. if its leaking move crank until its not leaking. if that doesn't work untorque the rockers and verify that leak down tester is now good...put more shims in and do it again.
good luck

9550

thanks
i get nervous and im like, is this enough tension now or is now enough or now? i go to far probably. end result though is even after i torque it down i can still spin the pushrod pretty easily, which im guessing is not good?

not stock cam
1.6 ford roller rockers
comp cam CCA-35-351-8
new lifters
stock pushrods as far as i know

9550

thanks
my distributor is out, but i guess i could put it back in as a guide.
so any spinning is bad. thats good to know.

i ordered the length checker already
heres my new plan:

remove all 16 rockers

hand turn crank to get cylinder on tdc (compression, right?? at tdc compression both lifters should be on base lobe, right? is there a better technique to assure im on base lobe??)

spin the oil pump significantly (2-3 minutes)

wait 5-10 minutes

spin oil pump again (just for fun)

install length checker

install whichever rocker im working on.

slowly tighten rocker bolt while checking spin

stop hand tightening when rod stops spinning

remove rocker and length checker and measure the length of the checker
move to next rocker (or am i supposed to torque down with the length checker in there to see if it torques properly to 1/4-1/2 turn???)

repeat over and over
seems like this is gonna take like 8 hours

mjr46

oh my......................................

9550

thanks for the help!!

actually, i just noticed i will need to adjust the length checker as well. this is gonna be fun

plus im sure im doing some other things wrong...

project68e

I think that should work fine. yes they should be on base lobe.

I have never used a length checker so im not positive, but I assume you torque it down...get your quarter to half turn. I would not check all 16 valves unless you plan on getting a custom set of rods with each size completely custom. they should all be +/- (.010) unless you have a bad lifter. keep in mind that is the point of a hydraulic lifter. the lifter should take up the slack in the valve train by pumping it up with oil. if it were me I would use the checker on one intake/exhaust valve per side of the engine...take your pick. then get the average of all rods and go for the nearest size that is off the shelf...at summit. another thing is if you cannot find the correct size, than get the next larger size and take up the slack with shims. measure the rods to make sure the sizing is correct once you have received it (gauge length not advertised). and I cant stress enough. get 2 shim kits that way you have all the sizes you need. the shim kits at summit are $9.00 a piece. they are cheap.

9550

thanks project

i have one shim kit already was anticipating using it before this trouble all started.

project68e

you should be good to go. mainly the reason I recommend 2 is that when I ordered my first one from summit it didn't have all the shims in the kit. it was missing 2 of the .030" shims.

I had another fox back in the late 90's and I remember having the same issue when I got shims with that car too. people probably order them for 1 or 2 valve issues then send them back. im sure retailers never actually check the bags to make sure they are all there