Diamonds may be a girl's best friend but for a gearhead these rockers sure look a lot like jewelry. These are Comp Cams' new Ultra Gold aluminum rockers, and they have just about everything you could want in a stud-mounted rocker. They are lightweight aluminum, fully rollered, polished to eliminate stress risers, and guaranteed for life by Comp. And even with all that, they usually sell for less than Comp's steel Pro Magnum rockers.
The cam sprocket bolts should be torqued to 20 ft/lbs, but with the cam button in place it can be difficult to get a socket on them. If you have this problem, try using a socket for a 1/4-inch drive wrench. It usually has a thinner wall.
Hopefully, by now your correct pushrods have come in. We're using 5/16-inch diameter pushrods in a 7.900 length (7.800 is stock). We would've preferred using 3/8 diameter pushrods to prevent any flex but the clearance issues prevented us. Before dropping the pushrods into place, squirt a few drops of assembly lube into the cups of each of your lifters.
Now, drive down one of the tabs on the cam button lock for each one of the bolts. It may seem like overkill to do this much to make sure these bolts stay in place, but if the timing set fails, it usually means catastrophic damage to the engine.
To protect the ends of the pushrods and the pushrod cups in the rockers, squirt a little high-pressure lube on the pushrods before installing the rockers. Also, a little lube on the threads of the rocker studs will help keep the rocker arm poly locks from galling to the studs.
With mechanical cams, your camshaft manufacturer will usually give you suggested lash settings on the cam card. We're going to start out with Comp's recommendations of 0.018 inch of lash for the intake and 0.020 for the exhaust but probably will do our own tests on the dyno later.
And once all the valves are lashed, we are done with the valvetrain component of the buildup. Next month, we'll set the intake on top and start buttoning things up with the accessories.