I truly admire your enthusiasm and like the fact that you're engaging with us.

When I look at the wear pattern on that 30 year old rocker arm my first thought is that it has been extremely well designed and provided magnificent service – doing exactly what it was intended to do. I would reuse them without a second thought.

Stamped steel rockers routinely run for 200K plus trouble free miles. I’ve reused literally hundreds of them in SBC rebuilds producing north of 400 HP with never a problem. On a few occadsions, I have used roller tips on a build (only to get a consistent 1.52:1 ratio) that routinely enjoy life above 6,000 RPM.

Full roller rocker arms will net you no ascertainable difference in your build and as has been shared above, may bring problems. I too have found the needle bearings from cheap roller rocker arms in an oil pump – not pretty.

I like Roger’s idea - $600 goes a long way toward a full set of AutoMeter gauges!