well i pulled my valve covers today an notice that my pushrods were rubbing against the guide plates. is this a problem or is it normal? this is on the car in my sig.

 

As long as it's not in a bind, won't hurt and is normal.

 

You should have hardened or chomolly rods if you use guideplates, if so your good.

 

ok cool i have comp pro mag chormely pushrods so im good i guess as there is no binding

 

If the pushrods are rubbing the sides of the guide plate that is normal and there intention. If they are contacting the bottom of the "U" that is a problem and needs to be taken care of. To check this clearance put the lifter on the nose of the lobe (full lift) and check if there is clearance, .020in or more. This can become an issue with high ratio rockers and moderate cam lift.

 

they are just rubbing on the sides of the guideplates

 

rubbing is fine, but if the rods are cutting grooves in the guideplates - that is a problem and most likely you need hardened guideplates.

 

What he said. /\

 

it does look like they are rubbing some of the guideplates material away on a couple of them.

 

If any of the guide plate is gone, there is a problem. This happed to me years ago.

One push rod wore a 1/8" spot in one of the slots which was enough to cause the rocker to fall off the valve. This bent the PR and damaged the top of the valve stem. I was running GM bowtie plates and i determined they they were NOT hardened.

You must run hardened plates or wear can occur. If the plate is hardened, you can draw a file across it and it will not cut the surface. Better find out soon.

 

Make absolutely sure that the guideplates were installed centered under the rocker studs. This is a very common mistake that most people overlook. They just toss on the plate and tighten down the rocker studs, locking the plate into whatever position it ends up at. While it's always close, you'll notice they can still move around a bit before the studs are tight.