Update on 3.0 Mechanical Roller Rockers

[Ondonti]

I took the heads off the Duster and swapped on the bad heads from my Spirit to the Duster tonight. Looking at the valve spring retainers on the original test mechanical rocker heads, I think I know what the squeaking sounds have been...

One of the retainers has a small bit of polish all around around the high top edge of the retainer and then another one has a deep polish. I am guessing the latter is the one that is squeaking right now. I guess I did not get enough clearance on that rocker. This lines up with my feeling that it was just one valve squeaking as I could hear it crying mightily when it went over the cam lobe for the last time when turning off the engine.

This leads me to believe that I can skip doing the oiling mod and maybe make the assumption that the pinholes in the hydraulic rockers are simply to prevent overpumping the hydraulic lifters...

I think this is nice news. I did buy 2 cheap sets of drill bits that go down to 0.5mm and then some silver solder paste to fill a larger hole and then use the tiny bit to drill through solder. Oh well? Sorry to get people paranoid about this issue as it seems to be no big deal
This will save me a bit of a hassle. I was quite pissed tonight when right before putting the stock bad rear head onto the Duster, I realized the OEM exhaust manifold does not have gaps between the cylinders so I had to drill and hammer out a hole between cylinders 1 and 3 so the oil dipstick could pop through. It was still incredibly hard to get the cylinder head into place.

Now, do i remove the rocker and clearance it a bit more or just keep driving it until the material is completely worn away?. I would prefer #2 :P

[RoadWarrior222]

Or while it's out, stick some lapping compound in there and work it back and forward a bit.

[Kreel]

I like the sounds of this. I haven't modified/drilled holes in my rockers yet so perhaps I will leave them and see what happens. My valvetrain setup will be considerably different so I may get away without grinding anything underneath the rocker in the first place

[Ondonti]

I like the idea of it too. I didn't want to drill the passages and loose that little bit of oil pressure, especially when it comes to high rpms. I also don't want excessive oil in the heads. Remember I had problems getting the oil to drain back into the crankcase when I had 1 exhaust vent per valve cover with big diameter hose etc until I came up with a workaround. Less oil means more space for blowbye gases.

Everything was shiny, and I figure if the stem tip was making so much noise, it would have been overheating, with some burned oil in the area (and that friction tearing up the guides). The sound seems to make a lot of sense now after seeing the shiny spot.

I will be daily driving these mechanical rockers so I wanted to know the top end will last. With the big regrind in there I would destroy the valve stems in short order like I did on my Ferreas, but with the excessive daily driver mileage, I could not have found it before a valve dropped.