How to Choose the Right Rocker Arms

today we're talking rocker arms and we'll look at how to choose a set based on your build and what you need to know before you start looking i'll give you some information on each type and style and give you my thoughts on what the best choices are it is most definitely a critical decision and we'll talk about it right now now like we've talked about in other videos rocker arm selection is situational really depends on what you're working with what your camshaft is what your spring pressure is you know what you're racing and or autocrossing or street driving what all those things come into play and they're super critical in this one thing that we're going to not talk about here is anything that's rocker arm related we're not going to talk about these really nice stud girdles we're not going to talk about trunnion upgrades for like the ls or the new lt rocker arms those things we're going to leave behind we're just going to concentrate on just the rocker arm selection itself so when you're looking to choose rocker arms there's really three things to consider again what the use is going to be the durability of that rocker arm and the cost now valve train stability is everything i think we made mention this in the in a couple of the camp videos i've done and certainly in any of the other videos we'll talk about valve train in stability is what wins the game so stability is what keeps everything together and functioning properly and not out of control when you get out of control that's when you have problems so those three things their use durability and cost are certainly the three key things you need to concentrate on when you're looking at selecting a rocker arm but now i'm going to show you them from i guess the entry level all the way up to the big uh race type use rocker arms here and we'll kind of go step by step we'll talk about them individually and give you some insight and background on each one of them and talk about some specs and what they're good for so there's four things to keep in mind when you're looking at rocker arms first one is how much open seat pressure on the spring second one is the operating rpm of the cam and those springs the valve lift and the valve spring diameter we go back to lift here for just a second you can never exceed that spec when when you're talking about rock arms and what they're capable of because if you mess the geometry up there you're you're gonna screw up the entire thing and you run into contact problems with retainers and and the rocker arms and and bad things happen so lift is a critical number you can never exceed it when you're selecting a rocker arm now let's take a look at the different types of steel bodied rocker arms there's a lot of choices here and some things that you need to look for so let's take a look at each one of these individually now first up is just the old stamped steel or cast bodied factory stock rocker arm these are okay up to probably about 5000 rpm beyond that you start to get a little deflection in the material and they're just not very good they don't handle lift very well they're not very strong and you know for a stock application under 5000 rpm uh torque engine off-road you know type of engine where it's low rpm a lot of torque these are probably just fine for that if you're going to spin it any higher than 5000 rpm you need to look at a different rocker arm and a different style and certainly strength and that's what we'll look at next now these are the first in like a performance series rocker arm and these are from comp there's a magnum roller tip it's a steel bodied really good design to help reduce the flex and distortion we mentioned the factory rocker arms and these happen to be for a big block chevy uh we're good up to about 5000 rpm uh max rpm on this style magnum rocker is 6000 rpm so really good for a drag car a street car maybe a little bit of autocross something that's not going to get too past that 6000 rpm we talked about spring pressure open spring pressure on this one is max at 350 pounds max valve lift on these is 550 so two really critical dimensions there 350 on the seat and 550 on the valve lift can't really go much beyond that now there are some some cons to this the design on it's a little different and sometimes people have a little bit of trouble with you know getting a little too low down on the stud and having some issues on the bottom side of it the other side is because it's not really radiused very well on the bottom this design sometimes you get into some issue with retainers but when you talk about being at a 550 on the max lift you really shouldn't run into those so it shouldn't be that big of a problem now push yard length is really critical on any roller tip rocker arm you have to make sure that you have the right pattern on the valve stem and this is where you're really going to need to get into making sure that you have the correct length push rod factory stuff we're using a factory head and all the other stuff not that critical it's pretty much always the same in this situation when you use this type of rocker arm that's when you have to be a little a little more critical so push rod length checker to make sure you got the right length push rod in that and that way you get that right contact place on the valve stem make sure it's done right now we're going to talk about easily my favorite rocker arm from comp and this is these ultra pro magnums it's an 8650 chromoly body very very nicely web designed arched so it has good clearance for the springs and retainers beautifully designed rock arm massive oversized trending in this thing this thing will handle a lot of abuse spree seat pressure 850 on the open seat huge increase over that uh magnum roller tip rocker arm we just looked at max lift on this goes up to 650. a little limiting there but for the most part a really good high horsepower street engine you're right there at both those 850 on the seat and 650 on the lift really really nice max rpm on the 7000 rpm now there's also an extreme duty version of this that goes to a thousand on the open seat pressure has a really nice machine built push rod seat in it is a very very heavy duty upgraded version of this ultra pro magnum i absolutely love this rocker arm really really good nice oiling on the inside of it needle bearing on the trunnions are very well designed they take a heck of a lot of abuse this is a really really good rocker arm these are what i use in the big block these are what i use in my ls every time where i can use this rocker arm these are the ones i use very reasonably priced so you know they're not going to price you out of the ballpark for a steel material type rocker arm this is easily my favorite one out of out of all of them it is the best design out there and certainly the best value for what you get out of it so certainly if you're you're have those uh you know the the lift and the seat pressure that fits into this ballpark this should be the very first rocker arm that you look at i guarantee you you are not going to destroy these things there is a lifetime warranty on these doggone rocker arms you are not going to find that on some of the other ones we are going to talk about here in just a quick minute that's how confident comp is in this rock arm because it will take an awful lot of abuse and keep on going so anyway this is really like i said my favorite and it's the top of the line for the steel you know bodied rock arms now we're going to take a look at the aluminum stuff now i'm going to give you the bottom line right up front here on these aluminum bodied rocker arms the technology has passed these by these cast bodied you know aluminum rocker arms have been out forever and a day they do really really good in some applications and some they just don't do that well in at all i have always been a firm believer and i still believe this because of the way the the oiling that's needed for these on these this cast bodied rocker you really really need to have a high volume pump to get a lot of oil to the top end of the engine to keep these things oiled correctly when you compare them side by side with the with the ultra pros that we just looked at you know the the trunnions are much bigger in that ultra pro rocker much smaller in the aluminum bodied one that's a definitely a negative that's why again why i love those ultra pro so much because the trunnions are massive in it and that certainly helps keep things more stable and under control now these aluminum bodied rocker arms have been out forever they do really really well i believe at the drag strip and they're hard to beat they're very very inexpensive they're very cheap they have a good radius on the bottom side so they do handle the the you know the spring diameter and the retainer diameters very well the ultra gold rocker by comp is the same way it's got a very very good radius on the bottom side to help for with a lot more lift on the on the cam and that's a huge you know one of those four points that we talked about that you really need to look at the ultra golds are definitely an upgrade from the aluminum body die cast version much better oiling system on the inside of this thing really really well done as far as you know getting a lot of oil up into the the trunnion and onto the valve stem very very critical on these rocker arms to get a lot of oil up there and certainly these redesigned ones from comp are are certainly better so between the two if you're going to choose i would run the ultra gold before i would run the the aluminum die cast now let's talk the specs on both these rocker arms on the high energy diecast aluminum rocker arm you're 550 on the openc pressure 550 on the lift easy to remember max rpm on this is 6500 very very good specs for a really decently powered drag car low cost good strength lightweight if you have a low mileage street car these are probably going to be okay on it but a moderate to you know low power bracket car you know racing application these are just fine they tend to distort a little bit you know these aluminum bodied ones after a while and i think that's the reason why the the fulcrum point in the the trunnion gets a little bit of abused on them but again for the amount of time you put on on the drag strip you'll probably never replace it just keep them you know a good oiling system in it you're good the ultra gold aluminum rocker 700 on the seat pressure now they have a little bit of a variance uh in the um in the uh the max lift on it and i think there's a range from about 550 or 600 all the way up to 700 on the lift so that's good max rpm bumps up on these as well 7 000 rpm on the now these are cnc machined rocker arm and because of that their tolerances are much tighter and much better on these and like i said they've got that nice arch design in it the strength is really good the oiling system is superior so if you're going to choose an aluminum bodied rocker arm the ultra gold is certainly certainly if it fits into the specs on it of your cam is certainly the way to go and again same type of thing i always run try to run a high volume pump in here to make sure everything stays really lubricated on that that top end of the engine but you know as far as these two style of rocker arms go the ultra gold is far superior than that that old style you know die cast aluminum rocker arm and lastly we're going to talk about the shaft mounted rocker arms now these are the most amazing pieces of equipment for a really really nice high-end race car but there is a little bit of a twist here comp makes this nice shaft mounted ls rocker arm system and for the new lt in a bsr style rocker arm shaft mounted rocker arm system very very nice high quality use the factory ls rocker arm right on there uh the shaft is is drilled so you can run alternate oiling to it if you want and not go just through the pushrod oiling very very cool piece but uh it is technically a shaft mounted rocker arm but the ones we want to talk about is the really the race ones here and these are the ones that are very very high-end now comp makes a set um tnd jezel there's a lot of really high-end stuff as far as all the specs on these goes these will handle an awful lot of everything they will handle a lot of spring pressure they will handle a lot of rpm they will handle a lot of max lift and and all of those things become much easier on the shaft mounted now these are extremely expensive um 2420 typically on the aluminum bodied rocker arms which is hugely strong 8620 or 8650 on the the steel shafts so it's a really nice hardened steel shaft extremely durable you can beat the heck out of these things it's what's on you know high-end drag race engines and you know this is it this is the end-all be-all because they can handle all the extremes of the those four pieces that we talked about earlier so shaft mod rock arms though oiling is a key to their success they require an awful lot of oil to make sure that they stay stable that they make sure that the the shaft and the aluminum body on the rocker don't distort themselves they do require quite a bit but there's a lot of adjustability in these and there's certainly a lot of you know high horsepower that you can get out of these because it is certainly the absolute most stable way to stabilize your valve train that's even over a stud girdle and any other combination you can think of again shaft mounted stuff really really high-end race stuff very very cool well i hope they gave you a little bit of insight on rocker arms and how to choose the right set for what you're working on remember you got those four things you need to ask yourself when you're picking out a rocker and that's open seat pressure operating rpm valve lift and whatever the spring diameter is and retainer diameter is if you know those things then the three things we talked about at the beginning what you're going to use it for what durability you need in the cost well they become pretty easy at that point really rocker arms are are boiled down into into two categories for me as far as i'm concerned and that's steel and aluminum the shaft mounted stuff is very very cool it is obviously awesome for the high-end race stuff for most of what i am doing though obviously and what i think probably most of you all are using it for is street use and really it boils down to whether you can use the stock rocker arm that roller tip magnum rocker arm one of the variants of the aluminum and those ultra pros and really when it boils down to it there's three choices for me that's those magnum roller tips the ultra gold and the ultra pro now for me again i'm the all i'm an ultra pro fan i absolutely love those things they do an absolutely amazing job and it fits into your cam specs well it's a great set of rocker arms to have so anyway i hope that cleared up a little bit on it maybe give you a little bit clearer guidance on you know what to look for and what questions to ask yourself when you're looking for a set of rocker arms remember valve train is all about stability it's about keeping things under control if you can do that you will continue to make horsepower as long as a rotating assembly stays in the thing that is the key to making big power in anything you do is valve train control so these will help you get there it's certainly a big key to it we'll talk about some other stuff down the road but i wanted to address the rocker arms and and certainly how to how to select the right set so anyway if you've got any questions don't hesitate please leave them down below if you if you liked the video please give me a thumbs up i always do appreciate that and i guess we will catch you all on the next video we'll see you

Channel: Muscle Car Solutions

Views: 966

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: valvetrain, rocker arms, valve train, comp cams, rockers, chevy, big block chevy, LS, ultra pro rockers, ultra gold rockers, magnum roller tip rockers, valvtrain stability, valvetrain harmonics, shaft mounted rockers, ultra pro magnum rocker arms, ultra pro magnum xd rocker arms, ultra pro magnum, ultra pro magnum roller rockers, jesel valvetrain, jesel rocker arms, td machine rocker arms, comp bsr rockers

Id: XYBCgxmpnaU

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021