As for the people asking about the valve lash you have adjust it just like an ls you have to get different length push rods to achieve the correct valve lash. comp cam sells a tool that is pretty cheap to measure for the exact push rod length. this is one disadvantage vs the stock rocker setup, but is outweighed by the massive strength increase you have in valve train stability. that's why gm moved to this valve train design with their mew engines rather than sticking with the original.
Watched the video, read the comments like to see the next video with a sbc together using this method stock/modified video the valve lash settings and show that it runs. Very interesting setup way to think outside the box.
@@jacobjarvis2545 we are definitely going to make a follow up video with it all together and several of it running we are definitely going to put it through its paces.
I've done this a bunch and 20 years ago. You can easily do it and it will work and it will pick up 10-15 hp depending. Also put the springs on as well especially if u ain't changing cams. The beehive picks up power as well.
GM switched to this because the aftermarket was doing it and better for along time and proved it to be better so when they made a new design they incorporated what people had been doing already. This is pretty much why all manufacturers change things. Or at least when they make positive changes. Still same valve train design just different hardware doing it.
Hot Rodder is a term that was used to describe a person who built it by himself. Scouring junkyards to find parts to make a project work. Nowadays, people just press a button and have it sent to them. Or, they pay someone way too much money to have them build some freaking expensive vehicle and tell everyone that they are hot rod guys. Not hating, just saying that for people that question this way of going about building something, this is a passion for a lot of us. Figuring it out and doing it ourselves. This is how innovation works. You get a sense of pride by doing it yourself. Then maybe someone else gets inspired by what you accomplished and they tweak it a bit and make it easier and better. I’m glad these new generation of hot rod people are keeping the tradition alive but things are sooooo different in the way things get done today that most don’t even know how the car culture got started. Ford didn’t have aftermarket heads and cams. They just sold you a model A in 1 color. If it wasn’t for guys like this guy in the video, people would have never modified their model A’s and hot rodding would have never been started. Understand what I’m saying? I applaud what this young man is doing. Pedestal and shaft rocker systems are very expensive in this economy. I’m thinking about getting creative now myself. Just to see if I can do it. One more thing everyone, when you truly understand how an engine and ALL of it’s components work together you can do things like this. Study, do the math. If you don’t know understand how the entire valve train works you can’t understand things like this. If you look at the end of a cam box and you don’t understand what all those numbers mean, start studying. You need to know all of that before you start telling others that their idea is dumb or that they should have done this or that. Peace and chicken grease my friends. 😅
A big part of the reason to use larger diameter studs on old school small blocks is for lateral support, the same reason you would use a stud girdle. The use of the pedestal eliminates a lot of the lateral movement and the bolt is mainly tasked with holding everything down.
If you use an impact or a drill, you push the rocker arm down against a vise or hard surface and the bolt on the Cavalier rocker arm will come right out. I used 3.4 v6 rocker arms in my Cavalier, had to use the 98 2.2 rocker arm pedestal with the tab milled off, but the 3.4 had some that were 1.6 ratio, but use an impact to take the bolt out, using a hammer to beat it out could cause some structural damage, the rockers are cast, not stamped steel
Great ingenuity, I like this set up. Although I understand that the LS rockers are longer on the valve side of the pivot, but using them on a 1st Gen style head would only increase the ratio if you move the pivot point further away from the valve. My understanding is that the rocker arms for small blocks that increase the ratio move the push rod pocket closer to the pivot point.
I work in a machine shop, how much do you think I’d have to set the holes back to make the 1.72 ratio ls rocker work? I’m building a set of homemade raised runner heads and I’m already welding a lot on them so moving some rocker arm pedestals won’t be to big of a deal.
Here’s my issue, why struggle and force a set of these to work, when, you can simply buy a stronger product that’s not using the metric system? A set of full shaft rockers from speedmaster, or a set of steel rockers from summit, or speedmaster… or just a generic white box 1.6 ratio rockers from eBay, unless you have an abundance of pocket cash then there’s comp cams, scorpion, etc etc. This feels like it would be a waste of money with little to no benefit.
well the alternative is buying the same style rockers for more money. doing it this way you get all factory chevy gm parts that have been tested and have known reliability. along with saving money and getting the same benefits as the premade rockers for less than half the price if you have a decent junkyard around. our local yard pretty much gives us little stuff like this that usually gets scrapped anyway.
Even if (stock) valve guide life is reduced to say 50,000mi, that'd still be alright. I bet this will work without a hitch. Dig up some 2.2 roller tip rockers and valve guide life becomes a non issue.
it would be easiest on a hyd roller cam but if you look at people that do solid rollers on ls's you can do it by shimming the bottom of the rocker arm pedestals or by getting diff length push rods but that would be time consuming though its possible.
Wow, the abuse that vise has received is outrageous. People that beat on vises need to alter habits such as purchase an anvil, one with a hardy hole. The jaws are horrendous. It is easy to make a new set of jaws although they will not be knurled on the face. Just use steel of the proper dimensions, drill 2 holes accurately and install. I have my original jaws plus I made a pair out of aluminum for softer material that can be marred easily. I called Engine Tech and they will not say what the actual ratio of the ER901 rocker arm is, only it fits the application according to VIN number of the vehicle. I guess it is part of a NASA project and top secret. They are not cheap, Rock Auto has them for $12.00 each. For that kind of money, I would spend the extra cash for a set of Scorpion roller rockers and get the ratio I want.
Brand new they aren't any cheaper but junk yards give those rockers away usually that's the idea here if you are dead set on brand new definitely go with a traditional roller rocker
The press in studs are 3/8", which is a hair smaller than 10mm. The 8mm bolts will push in with no problem, so that can not be done. Looks like a custom stud from say ARP with the 7/16" UNC in the head, and 8mm for the rocker with a nut. Probably need the studs without guide plates and the nut on the stud. Otherwise, the pedestal needs to be milled farther down so the rocker and guide can sit on the stud nuts.
This is exactly what i wanted to know.... Excellent information ( considering i have several of this style 4.3 engine available for scavenging....) wonder how close the 4.3 pushrods are to the right length. 4.3 rocker?
This is a great video and great information. 👍 Ignore the other people saying stuff about 10mm bolts and what not. They're stuck in their way of thinking and they're obviously not familiar with the way pedestal mounted rocker arms work. Their points are valid when using a traditional small block Chevy rocker arm that's shaft mounted but one of the huge benefits of a pedestal mounted rocker arm is the resistance to deflection, which only really happens on a traditional shaft mounted rocker arm. The bolts on a pedestal mounted rocker arm are not subjected to the same stress of "locating" and supporting the rocker arm.
@@kennydemartini2169 I wouldn't think the stock mounting stud for the rocker arm would be long enough for a taller nut with poly locks. I honestly don't know. I've never tried. The only time I've used stud girdles were on screw-in studs, roller rockers and guide plates. 👍
@@kalybnielsen4183 too me a studgirdle is already available for what I have already aquired including the taller valve covers. Maybe on a rebuild before buying any new expensive parts then the cost and time of this mod including individual length pushrods might be ok. also if you try and average out the pr length so they are all the same it seems like lifter pumpup would be a question at higher revs.
Im building a 3.4 60 deg v6 and they have similar rockers with 1.6 ratio. I thought I was smart and bought LS-rockers just to find they were too long. Then I found that the rockers I had were 1.6.. But I was wanting to get 1.5 for the exhaust so this could be a good tip. What engine did you get them from?
Stock springs should work as long as the cam is stock the rockers don't have much of weight difference so spring selection shouldn't change. sorry for the late reply life has been busy.
The weak point of your conversion is the 8mm bolt .With the valve at full lift all the load is trying to pull the bolt out of the head and at the same time putting the bolt in tension an 8mm bolt does not have the tensile strength of an 3/8 or 7/16 stud. A better idea would be to drill the arm and cradle to 10mm high tensile bolt and use another insert.
The LS uses a larger cam core, which makes the cam lobes larger and less aggressive, when using it on a sbc with its smaller cam core the 8-10mm bolt is not strong enough for anything other than maybe a stock cam rebuild.
I have done plenty ls run 150 nose on stock bolts So I am sure it can handle a roller cam on sbc Curris of the geometry of the rocker on this conversion
@@b.c4066 The larger LS cam core diameter makes life easier on the lifters allowing more drastic ramp acceleration which in turn makes life harder on the rest of the valvatrain. I don't think the goal of this conversion is to run some wild camshaft numbers, it's a very frugal and readily available source for an upgrade on rockers. My question is about pedestal mounting height and pushrod length.
are you referring to the rockers that look like stamp steel rockers but have a roller trunnion? those would work but I like the Ls style bc they are a little stronger
You don't think the rocker will slip off the valve left or right since the pedistools are not all attached to each other after cutting them, the only holding them from spinning is one bolt. I think that's what rocker stands are usually one piece
That sounds great. Except. I only see slightly over the diameter of the pedestal mount bolt for thread engagement into an aluminum cylinder head. A traditional gen 1 screw in stud has what half an inch of thread engagement of the screw in stud into the cylinder head material. If 3/8 screw in studs are you can upgrade to 7/16. Also, you have to check rocker arm geometry not just push rod length. Actually push rod geometry decides pushrod length, not the other way around. And yes this does mean you don’t have adjustable rocker arms. If you learn how to adjust valves on a gen 1 the way the factory did, you can run to 7400 rpm’s with factory stamped steel rockers and flat tappet hydraulic cams. Go roller and it’s even better. Is this the reasons everyone goes LS, so they don’t have to learn how to adjust valves? Shaft rockers for the gen 1 have gone past $1500 to $2000 a set. Parts costs have gone crazy. It’s some great ingenuity. But seems like a lot of work for something that already works as or should past 7000rpms stock. Show some dyno runs, or miles of durability or rpms that are better than what we already have. And for those that say you don’t need valve adjustment with the LS. For stock and modified not always. At a certain point, you need to change to adjustable shaft rockers on the LS also. So if you know how to adjust a valves anyway it should not be an issue. This is why gen 1 people are wondering why valve adjustment is so difficult to understand. It’s not. Follow any old repair manual and you never need to make adjustments once it’s set, if you do it right the first time.
The thread engagement into the head is definitely one possible weak point. I work at a machine shop and do all there head work and I've seen screw in studs with more engagement that my inserts and less than my inserts. Nether of which reported any issues so I'm fairly confident that this won't be a problem. As for geometry I tried a ton of different combinations for shimming the pedestals I actually put a set in the surfacer and reduced the height so I could try lower than stock and higher. After all that what do you know completely stock height with no shims was the best one, now that I know that all I have to do is get the correct length pushrod that gives me the right lifter preload. I wouldn't say most people that want a valve train like a ls just don't want to learn how to adjust valves the main advantage to me is valve train stability. To some degree a ls is harder to get right than a sbc because it's none adjustable. No matter what you do this setup will require some fiddling but I think the end result will be worth it
@@BasicMaintenance2 I do too. Keep after it. I was afraid it would take shims to fine tune it after the pushrods were sized. Will you not worry about lifter pumpup at higher rpms on the preload distance of one or two?
I have 4.3 vortec and this type of rockers Stop beaten em ! They have some notches to protect bolts to falling out but its treaded ! Just rotate counterclockwise and bolt will go out
I didn't know that, that makes this a lot better so the pushrod lengths can all be the same. Now it means a lot more to me. Are the shims easily avalable?
2024 just started and this guy is gonna win the worst idea of the year award. Just buy some roller rockers people that are actually intended for your application.
@@BasicMaintenance2 450?????? Dude did the internet reach your village yet? Jegs - summit - Amazon - speedway ever hear of those places? 150 will get you a set of 16 full roller rockers. Howard cams sells a set of 8 for 90 so that's 180.
@@BasicMaintenance2 And your options are bad. For your own good don't do what your doing. Your going backwards most performance builds will convert none adjustable rockers to adjustable not the other way around. You'd be better off drilling the hole bigger in those rockers your trying to use if that's possible and forget all that other nonsense.
As long as you achieve proper lifter preload it makes no difference how you adjust that preload weather it be by adjustable rocker arms or difference length pushrods this setup is basically straight out of the newer gm 4.3 6 cylinder engines that are just small blocks minus 2 cylinders
I'm using 7mm Powerstroke ductile valve guides with used titanium valves from Rusty Wallace that i had cut down to 2.05 and 1.6. 200cc heads. Five inch tall xceldyne with non guided stock rockers, corvette beehive springs. Most are all 6 and 7 inch tall for NASCAR but you can find stock height out there. The guides are super hard to hone but you can run zero clearance since ti has no expansion. It's awesome. Might build another 383 and add a snail. Car porn.
I don't think this would work you have no valve adjustment just looks like a nightmare and waste of time to set up i watch the entire video hoping to get it but no 😂
Ls engines don't have a valve adjustment either you have to get the right pushrod doesn't seem to stop it from being one of the most popular engines ever built
in regards to using LS rockers sketch because of geomeetry.... would installing lash caps help? it makes diameter of stem larger obviously could they help relieve this issue?
Most likely not entirely I would bet it would help but not much also as another person pointed out even though a ls rocker is 1.7 to 1 because of the geometry of the sbc head you wouldn't get the full 1.7 to 1 ratio without moving the rocker mounting holes back which if you are going to that much trouble then I would say buy roller rockers meant for a sbc the machine work would be too expensive
This is all wrong, the amount of movement on the valve tip will kill guides quick, LS and sbc rocker pivot lengths are significantly different, don’t cheap out; buy quality roller rockers otherwise you’re just kicking the can further down the road
@@circlejerk6861 you are aware that these arent Ls rockers right. Just Ls style but they are out of a 2.2 4cyl chevy you are right ls rockers wont work as we explained in the video.
@@BasicMaintenance2 a lot of folks only hear about every third word in a explanato ion. Thats why some people go over the same thing maybe two different ways. That the new gen folks mainly.
