not my valve stem's keeper

[eschaider]

From the pic in post #21 your valve reliefs are on the wrong side of the bore, like Gary suggested. It appears that someone unfamiliar with proper engine building practices simply assembled your engine without much care and certainly without inspection.

This is a relatively common mistake for a novice engine builder. Another relatively common mistake is to get pin offsets backwards because the builder is not paying attention or more likely doesn't understand. With your pistons in backwards, as they are, if you used offset pins it is highly probable they have found their way to the wrong holes also.

The rocker arms should never hit the retainers. The rocker manufacturers have been making these things for the better part of a half century. All the discovery in the manufacture of properly dimensioned rockers has been discovered a long time ago. If the engine's rocker geometry is not properly set up with correct pushrod length a short pushrod will lower the pushrod side of the rocker on its fulcrum allowing the kind of rocker to retainer interference you have experienced.

Another facet of the valvetrain set up is proper positioning of the rocker roller on the tip of the valve stem. A rocker with properly established geometry will wipe the tip of the roller from just short of the valve stem center to the valve stem center at max lift and then back again to its seated or resting position.

Another approach starts the rocker contact patch just short of center on the valve stem, wipes across the center of the valve stem at mid lift and reaches the geometrically similar position as the original starting point but on the opposite side of the valve stem at max lift. As the valve closes the rocker contact patch reverses its path to again return to the as seated condition it started from.

Different builders have different preferences. My personal preference for a pushrod engine is the first example.

To do these various things during the build process is not difficult but does require you to actually exert the effort to do the job. It appears whoever the engine builder these sorts of considerations were not a consideration.

This repair journey you are about to embark on will require a disassembly, repair of damaged components and correct reassembly of the all components. Engine builders who make these sorts of mistakes also do things like forget to balance the rotating assembly, balance it wrong, assemble the wrong piston to the wrong connecting rod and then get it on the wrong rod journal.

As if that is not enough, you can also bet that whoever overlooked which hole and which way the pistons should be fitted to the block also overlooked or incorrectly phased your cam to the crank. You are basically looking at a complete reassembly of the engine in the correct fashion rather than how you currently have it.

Bitter pill, I know but it is the right thing to do. There is no telling what additional 'special gifts' you are going to find.


Ed