is this how?

Ok maybe It's too obvious but I gotta ask... I presume your talking about a solid lifter motor, not a hydraulic lifter motor right??

Mstng2 said:

Ok maybe It's too obvious but I gotta ask... I presume your talking about a solid lifter motor, not a hydraulic lifter motor right??

Click to expand...

He mentioned a plunger depressing so I don't think so.

I figured it was hydraulic from step 2 when it's stated i adjust the exhaust side, by tightening down the rocker, until i see the "plunger" on the lifter depress

Okay. first off we need to find out EXACTLY what we're working with here. Commonly there are 2 different lengths of pushrods used int he 302 fords. They happen to correspond with the cylinder block that you are using. If you use the wrong pushrods you could cause damage to the valvetrain or just excessive cylinder leakage (depending on the diameter of your cam's base circle)

Anyhow-
1. What year is the engine block? This we MUST know!
2. Where did you get the pushrods from?
3. Shims are only usually offered with aftermarket rockers. Are these aftermarket?

On bolt down style rocker arms, such as yours you don't need a sequence of Intale and Exhaust events to tighten them down. Just install them and torque them 18-20ftlbs.

Now- should you feel that the hydraulic plunger is going too far down into the lifterbody, tha were the shims come into play. but this is only really necessary on fairly large aftermarket cams, usually 280 degree (adv) or 230 degree (@.050) duration cams. If this is the case, I'll have to walk you through the process.

An easy way to tell if you may need shims, make sure your on the backside of the came lobe (or close to) of the valve your're checking. Run the bolt down till you get zero lash and then tighteh an additional 1/2 turn (remember these bolts are course thread and run down farther than the real adjustable's fine threads) Any slop (aka distance) between the pedastal's seat surface and the underside of the pedestal will need about that thickness of shimming. Now this method is just a general way to do it and NOT suggested for you are running a REALLY hot cam. Other tooling and process should be used in that case.

I think idellically you want that littke plunger to go into the lifter bore about .020 to .030 but I've ran tham much deeper than that in my old stupid kid days and didn't have any catastropic problems. Just as long as it doesn't bottom the plunger in the lifter body, though I really do recommend you try to keep it in the above spec.

hope this helps out.

Dano78 said:

On bolt down style rocker arms, such as yours you don't need a sequence of Intale and Exhaust events to tighten them down. Just install them and torque them 18-20ftlbs.

Click to expand...

I disagree, every instruction sheet that I've read for installing pedestal rockers still requires you to go through a sequence so that your torqueing the bolt only when the valve is closed.

Crane Cams pedestal rocker arm install directions

Well since he didn't really leave any other specs I just gave him the process out of an 80's model Ford shop manual for a stock type valvetrain, figuring that's probably what it was and it didn't say anything about rolling the engine over, even though it's probably a good idea. I was basicallly suggesting that he not needed to use a solid lifter adjustment sequence to install his hydraulic valvetrain.

Naturally, if you use aftermarket parts you want to check all tolerances, however in all of my past experiences with the large margin of error (even as listed in the tech article you posted) there's plenty of room when using stock or stock replacement components. How else would you do, say an FE engine with a rail rocker setup?
When running a hot cam (warranting much more stout valves prings) it certainly would be wise to roll the engine over onto it's compression stroke when torking down the rockers as the excessive spring pressure could effect the 5/16 bolts' torque measurement if combined with the pressure of opening a valve too.

I only have one thing to add. Pick up a chilton because there is a sequence to adjust multiple rockers rather than one cyl. at a time. I used to use it on my solid cammed 460.