Stripped out the rocker arm bolt hole

I think I over torqued it the last time I tried to quiet down the ticking noise from the valvetrain. I tightened all the bolts to 25lb-ft to see if the ticking noise would go away after the head swap. It didn't. I recently replaced the lifters to see if that would cure the ticking noise. It didn't. So, I decided to get longer pushrods and use the shim kit I got to adjust the length. Since 6.250" is stock I purchased 6.350" PRs. The shims are .03" and .06". That makes the overall possible PR lengths 6.350, 6.320, 6.290, 6.260 with or without shims.

Looks like the longer bolt might work. Hope it holds under use.
 
JJ95GTID said:
I think I over torqued it the last time I tried to quiet down the ticking noise from the valvetrain. I tightened all the bolts to 25lb-ft to see if the ticking noise would go away after the head swap. It didn't. I recently replaced the lifters to see if that would cure the ticking noise. It didn't. So, I decided to get longer pushrods and use the shim kit I got to adjust the length. Since 6.250" is stock I purchased 6.350" PRs. The shims are .03" and .06". That makes the overall possible PR lengths 6.350, 6.320, 6.290, 6.260 with or without shims.

Looks like the longer bolt might work. Hope it holds under use.

A friend of mine had the same problem with his factory rockers. He thought it was a lifter, but for the hell of it, he just swapped rockers, and low and behold, the noise moved along with the rocker. So he put one of my old ones in, and voila, problem solved.
Scott
 
Well, I ended up having to buy a helicoil kit from NAPA for the stripped rocker bolt hole. No big deal.

Ended up using both the thick (0.06") and thin (0.03") shims with the 6.350" PRs. So, I increased my overall length to 6.260" from the stock 6.250" PRs. I tried just using the thick shims but it was too much length (6.290") holding open the valves. It started like that but ran crappy even at idle. Having it at 6.260" seems to be a little quieter and I can definately feel a difference accelerating down the road.
 
Sorry to hijack but I was wondering something...

On our motors do you just torque down the rocker arms and go? I am used to having to adjust them like chevy's but I know ours are setup way different.
 
MustangGT95 said:
Sorry to hijack but I was wondering something...

On our motors do you just torque down the rocker arms and go? I am used to having to adjust them like chevy's but I know ours are setup way different.
well theres a few factors

some aftermarket cams have a smaller lobe
if the heads have been milled
what heads your running
what style rockers your using (pedastal vs stud mount)
 
Stock and Ford GT-40 heads (Both cast iron and aluminum) have pedestal mount rockers. So yeah, you just bolt them down to 22lb-ft of torque. To adjust you need a shim kit. I had the Ford shim kit I purchased when I did the head swap. But, it turned out that the stock Ford PRs were too short. Or, another way to look at is the new head pedestal pads were further away from the lifters. This caused the need for longer PRs.

To get the most adjustability I got the 6.350" PRs so that I could adjust the length using the shims. This let me have 6.350" (no shim), 6.320" (0.03" shim), 6.290" (0.06" shim), or 6.260" (both shims) PR lengths.