Re: jack's newbie question of the day-increasing c
Guess because I am using roller rockers, that becomes less of an issue. I was told by Richard Good, when I first had my head shaved and realized the the stock-sized push rods absolutely would not work, that all I had to do was shim the train to lift them. We went round and round with that, never quite sure why Richard, in all his wisdom, kept insisting that that was all I needed to do. And he knew the amount of shaving we had done to the head, took the info right off his site and got all the new springs, seals, etc. from him for the machine shop to assemble. Finally, Ted Schumacher and I figured out how much shorter I needed on my chromoly push rods (I honestly don't remember the amount but it was quite a bit shorter than stock) and he had me a set made up. I actually made up an adjustable push rod out of a couple of my old stock rods, and after multiple turns of the crank and many, many measurements, came up with a number that almost perfectly matched Ted's number. Again, forgot the number, Ted would know. The ones that I had, brand new, could have been shortened but no machine shop around here wanted to take on the project of doing a cut-off and reinserting the shaft in the stem. I even doubled the number of shims to the point that the rocker train became unstable and was blocking the oil ports. Sooooo, I figured getting new push rods was enough. I think there was a disconnect between Richard and me and his insisting that I only needed to shim. One of us was having a bad day or a brain-frt. Anyway, have checked valve lash multiple times since and everything seems quite stable. Perhaps lunacy was a strong word.