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