Wow - there's a lot of myth and misinformation here. There is no need or benefit to soaking lifters in oil before installing them. Put a good coat of heavy assembly lube on the rollers, and in the cups. If you want to assure that they're full of oil before start up (and you should), the proper way to do that is to pull the distributor, and use a drill/shaft to turn the oil pump and prime the system. This should be done after the rockers are installed. Prime the pump until a steady stream of oil comes up each pushrod and flows down over each rocker. Your lifters will be full of oil and ready for start up. If you really want to get a bit of oil everywhere before start up, have a friend put a socket on the crank bolt and rotate the engine a bit while you're priming.
For the stock pedestal mount rockers - rotate the engine by hand so the pair you're installing are on the base circle or heel of the cam -- that is, the valves they control should be closed during the install. If you have that piston at tdc at the end of the compression stroke - both will be closed. Put the rockers on and tighten the bolt by hand until there is zero lash - no gap on the valve stem end or the pushrod end. Then torque to 18-20 ft-lbs. while counting turns -- you should hit that torque somewhere between 1/4 and 1 turn of the bolt AFTER starting the torquing process at zero lash. If you kept track of what rocker went where, they'll probably all hit the torque around 1/2 a turn of the bolt after zero lash. If they take more than 1 turn to hit the torque, you'll need a shim kit to shim that rocker a bit higher. If they hit torque in less than 1/4 turn, or you aren't able to get to zero lash even with them tightened - you'll need longer pushrods, or to remove some material evenly from the bottom of the rocker trunion. You shouldn't have those problems putting a stock set up back together.
Good luck with it.
