Well, I'm running a 6 spd t-56 with 3.23 gears and a rather decent sized cam. This cam sorta jerks like your compression braking with your transmission below about 1900rpm. Well, I think this is what is described as cam surge? Anyways, yesterday I had to drop it down in the 1500rpm range because the cops were driving by and my exhaust is rather loud. I did that while he was following me the whole time, and when I came to a red light he turned off. Soon as the red light turned green, i went to give it gas and BAM. I pulled into a parking lot within 30 feet away, and pulled the valvecover. It was a broken rocker arm and bent pushrod. I walked across the street to autozone and bought the new parts for $4 and put it back together. It made it home just fine and ran smooth as ever. Perhaps a little smoother. My question is.. what caused this? Does the cam surging cause this at all? Because thats when it happened.. Thanks!

 

**** dude my question to you is its that damn easy to remove the valve cover and replace those parts how easily can i do valve cover gaskets **** bro

 

Bad rocker. Been there done that. I would check the other ones around it. I was in a car when that happened. Got a new rocker. Found out later the pushrod was bad. Got a new pushrod, found out that it had caused the next one to go bad too.

 

I would replace all of them,with a good after market roller tip rocker,like Comp Cams maybe. The stock rocker don't like thoughs high lift cams.

T.

 

im guessing it broke cuz you bought a $4 rocker arm ... just kidding.. what kinda arms were on there.. stock?

 

Valve cover gaskets = piace of cake. They can be a pain with these centerbolts getting them lined up just right.. but not a big deal. Just undo valve covers, put new gasket on, tighten back up..

Now as far as the rocker.. they came on the car when I bought it.. they looked very similar to the melling $4 rocker arm I put back on there. These are protopline vortech heads, any part # suggestions for a nice roller rocker? I'm in the $150 range right now, best I can do.. for now.. unfortunately. Would you suggest hardened pushrods too? I put them on my ls1.. do I really need em in this 6000rpm application? Also, how much risk do I run driving it a few weeks and breaking another one? Is it possible it could cause more damage?

Could valve float have caused the damage? I'm sorta worried about that myself. I take it to 6000-6200 on occasion, and yesterday at the track was one of those occasions. I didn't install the springs, so I'm going to email the person who sold it to me and ask what kind..

 

Hey aklim, how do you like those AFR 190's?

I was thinking about getting a set, along with the Superram Manifold, LT4 hotcam, and a 58mm throttle body.

 

That rocker could have just been a defective one that wasn't up to specs. A rocker arms job is pretty simple, it's not like it gets slapped around too much. Ive seen pushrods break because of improper valve lash but I doubt thats your problem in this case if you have a hydraulic cam. I highly recommend 1 peice pushrods, I've seen tips break off of the cheapy ones with the little ***** on the ends. As for a rev limiter or RPM range, its tough to say without knowing exactly what the valve train is made of. I'll admit i dont have the very best of the best but the parts that are in there are good and my motors seen 7800 a handful of times. If you have a decent set of aftermarket lifters / valvetrain parts I don't think you should have a problem.

 

Loved them. No problems there. The incident happened to my buddy in a 90 Mustang.

I had TFS heads and hated them. I broke a Summit brand RR and when I checked it, I found that one of my #4 spring was broke too. A few months after I did that, I decided to fix the leaky manifold. While I was at it, I wanted to check the heads out. Found out that the #4 valve had hit the piston when the spring went. Had to change the motor. The fragment had bounced around and scarred the bore and head. Wanted to trade the head in. The machinist removed the springs and found that the valves on the entire passenger side were slapping around the valve stem guides. BTW, the pushrods were wearing out the guideplates from their slop.

 

Aklim, seems like you have a pretty decent engine combo. What kind of 1/4 times have you run???