sonett - new rocker arms, pushrods, shorter v-belt
I continue chasing a ticking noise from the engine. Back when I rebuilt the engine I purchased the only rockar arms that Jack Lawrence at MSS had left. They were supposedly for a V4 but would work. They were actuall a different design and were more massive in every dimension. I believe these things would take a fair amount more power without issue. The problem is that they were hitting the valve springs when the valves were fully closed. I ground those rocker arms down and eliminated the contact with the valve springs. Unfortuatnely, I still had ticking.
So I opted to replace the rocker arms entirely. This was after I found a website where I could order the orignal style rocker arms. This place also sells high strength pushrods. I don't really care about having higher strength. If something is going to bend and break, I would be happy if it was the pushrod. Regardless, one of my pushrod caps was worn and made the rocker arm pull pointy. These high strength pushrods are the only new ones I could find, so I ordered a set and installed them too. Spoiler alert, the new rocker arms didn't eliminate the ticking. It is coming from the cylinder #3. More on that later.
Lastly I replaced the v belt. My original v belt was slightly too long. It wasn't slipping but it had no adjustment range left at the alternator. Previuosly I removed the mechanical fan, thus finding the right sized v belt is guess and check. I previously found a cheapo Duralast belt that fit great. I wanted a Gates XL belt instead. First I bought the one with the same diameter as the Duralast and it wasn't even close. I then went down a size, and now finally down one more size. The Gates XL 7340 fits great! It is loose enough you can still get the spark plug boot off of cylinder 1, but tight enough that you still have adjustment range at the alternator. I finally found a winner.
