Wow I wonder if those retainers are the old aluminum ones?

Thanks Ted, now I know why.

Mark

1956 Mercury M100
1955 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan
Delta, British Columbia

The offset of the rockers at some of the valve stems for the Y engines is a necessary nuance when using the stock rocker arms. That offset is required so that the pushrods are all centered within their respective holes while requiring only a single rocker arm design for all valve locations. That’s why the stock rockers have that extra long pad for the valve stem end. It’s important that the pushrods remain centered in the pushrod holes and this makes it difficult to center up the stock rockers on the valve stems using the factory rocker arms.

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When using aluminum roller tipped rocker arms, the adjusters are offset in the rockers so that the rockers can be both centered over the valve and the pushrods centered within their holes. This requires three different rocker designs to allow the roller tips to be centered squarely over the valve stems; left offset, right offset, and zero offset for the pushrod adjusters. To complicate the roller rocker arm issue,the iron heads take a different combination of offset rockers versus what’s required for the aluminum heads.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

I was just curious, as I plan to use the springs on my rocker shafts. I was wondering if I should realign the rockers as a couple of mine are off centre like in the picture. I was wondering if spacer washers would put extra load on the sides of the affected rocker arm(s) and increase wear?
Thanks.

Mark

1956 Mercury M100
1955 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan
Delta, British Columbia

Stuey. You’re right in that some additional horsepower was found by using the springs rather than the solid bushings between the rockers. It would appear that the springs do help to settle down any unwanted movement or bounce of the rockers when they are trying relax between valve spring actions.

Lorena, Texas (South of Waco)

centering the rocker arm tips not so critical on those original style rockers as they have a wide pad at the valve, much more tricky with roller tips and there has to be clearance to allow for expansion. i seem to remember Mr Eaton finding the springs gave a bit more HP over the spacers. but i may be wrong, the memory plays tricks nowadays

stuey

looks very familiar to an FE engine with rocker arm spacers.
most spacer kits come with shims as well to fine tune the rocker arms to valve tip centers.

higher performance engines use spacers instead of springs.

i'd remove those spacers and add the shims.

call it done.

This ain't no L-Kamino!

I saw this engine posted on ebay. It was apparently rebuilt many years ago for a race car and was not used. What sort of rocker assembly is this? Are the grey coloured pieces spacers that replace the springs? If so, I see that at least one of the rocker arms is off centre. Why would this not have rectified when the engine was rebuilt?

Thanks.



Mark

1956 Mercury M100
1955 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan
Delta, British Columbia