blown383

Okay my car hasn't been running for about a good 9
months now. After my cam install things ran great for
about a week and took a dump after I drove around for
a week and readjusted the rockers.

After several suggestions on the boards and lists I
pull everything and discover that 6 of my pushrods
have a slight bend in them. So I get a new set and
swap them in and readjusted the rockers. I also did a
compression check on cylinders 1,3,5, and 7 while the
motor was cold with all of the spark plugs pulled and
TB crack all the way open.

#1 showed 30, 45 and jumped to 120 on the third time I
crank it over.
#3 was 120
#5 was 70-90
#7 was at 30

I have no idea what this means but its probably bad.
I took one look at the passenger side and said screw
this...NO way in hell I could get that compression
fitting and hose to fit. So I replace all of the
spark plugs and pray that its only the pushrods.

Reinstalled the pushrods and adjusted the rockers to
ZERO lash and locked down the ploy lock. Started up
the car and it finally idled!!! So I shut her down
and put the valve covers back on and fired her up
again....then I hear this nasty knocking sound and
yanked the valve covers to find 2 rockers off the
valve stem and a bunch of the rockers were totally
loose.

Readjusted all of the rockers to ZERO lash again and
this time around it didn't idle at all! Maybe I
messed up....so I tried adjusting with the same method
of spinning the pushrod till I feel a slight drag and
lock down the ploy lock. Fired her up....and same
deal...no idle.

At this point I was pissed....so I loosened up all of
the rockers to the point where they would wobble back
and forth but not slip off the valve stem and cranked
the car over. It idled like a CHAMP! One by one I
just turned the rocker nuts down enough to where it
would start to lower the idle and almost stall and
back up using only my fingers and tightened the poly
lock. These damn comp "R" lifters are sensitive as
HELL... a 1/6 of a turn will either stall the car out
completely or let it idle.

After adjusting them I went for another ride and it
idled but after a while it started to stumble again
and stall. I need to readjust them again but need a
preceise way of doing them. Anyone have difficulties
adjusting the rockers with comp "R"s? I tried
everything from 1/2 turn to 1/4 to Zero turns after
zero lash and Im getting nowhere.

-B

P.S. Someone mentioned that it might be a valve to piston clearance issue...anyone care to comment?

96LT1TX

I would check your timing set... if you have a stock replacement it could possibly have been too much power (which I was just told on my cam/headers and basic mods car) I found the teeth in the intake manifold, look next to the hole in the front near the timing cover. I hope you find no teeth, I did.

LT4 set on the way...

blown383

I went with a Cloyes double rollers...so I highly doubt I snapped a few teeth off of that bad boy.

-B

shoebox

I am guessing you had the rockers too tight when you were doing the compression test. If you didn't, you have some serious compression problems that no amount of valve adjustment is going to fix. You might try your compression test again with the rockers backed off. Bent pushrods is not a good sign, either.

If you got your timing set installed out of phase, that could cause valve to piston clearance issues and poor idle.