Thread: Cammed roller SBC rockers contacting spring retainers

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Okay I'm brand new to this forum and not the best with older engines but damn good with modern engines and a laptop. The is for my fathers truck slash my tow rig. He barely has any money so I do the maintenance and he built the engine. It's a 95 roller block with 96 heads.

I purchased a Howards cam and lifter package with the specs below and 1.5 roller rockers all from KMJ as they said it is a direct drop in. Well they won't refund the money on the rockers now that they're destroyed and I'm asking about the cam because obviously they just wanted the money.

Now the problem seems to be that something is off and the rockers are contacting the spring retainers and backing off the poly locks which is creating random dead cylinders until readjustment. Factory rockers have a curve in them which looks like it's mean to compensate for the spring edge/retainer and these chinese crap rockers are straight armed. I need suggestions before buying anything else since my pockets are empty at this point. Thank you in advance.

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Howards cams have been around forever. I have used many. So I doubt the cam quality had anything to do with it. Maybe application was wrong. Sounds to me like the ends of the valves have been ground down to far or wrong rockers. Did you check with die the roller pattern on top of the valve stem?

Did you check to see if you had the correct pushrod length before installing the rockers?

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Did you check to see if you had the correct pushrod length before installing the rockers?

Or the wrong spring retainers. I think Pat McCarthy had a discussion about a similar deal a couple weeks ago.

Spring retainers are factory. I went and bought him factory stamped 1.6s and it seems they're not contacting so we will see what's what in the next week.

the 480 lift is measured at 1.5 and I'm worried about his stock springs now running 1.6s. The vehicle NEVER sees high RPMs