Thread: 1.5 to 1.6 rocker swap
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01-19-2015 11:23 AM #1
Ditto what Tech said – the 1.6 rockers have some bad memories for me from a long time ago when I drank the Kool-Aid and slapped a set of really neat gold anodized aluminum 1.6:1 rockers on a rebuild I was doing for a friend. I ended up with a catastrophic failure because I didn’t properly check for coil bind and wound up on the bad side of things with 16 bent push rods and one broken spring that allowed a valve to stay open and destroy a piston – expensive to fix to say the least.
Something that I learned from an old Chevy machinist as a result of my mishap is that the “perfect” ratio on all but a highly modified small block is 1.52:1. He told me that most of the factory stamped rockers vary between 1.45 and 1.50:1 so there’s some opportunity to improve on the rockers without breaking the bank by installing a quality roller tip in a 1.52:1 ratio.
If you feel like you need to replace rockers, Comp Cams (and others) make such a rocker for less than $200 for a set and they’re a true bolt-in, adjust per factory specs and go. They will not give you a seat-of-the-pants boost, but the roller tips will take some heat and stress off your valve train.
Good luck and let us know what you come up with,
Glenn"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty." John Basil Barnhil
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