ford 302 rockers/pushrods: replace?
 

i am in the middle of helping a friend do a cylinder head job on his ford truck. the heads are on. the problem is that the rocker arms got scrambled due to a freak wind storm. the pushrods are all labelled and oriented, but half of the rocker arms lost their labels.

question: should he replace the rockers/pushrods, or will it not matter?

thanks, pelican brain trust!

d.

I would just toss the rockers in and don't worry. It's just a truck engine and has hydrolic lifters. shouldn't be a issue.


I would worry more about the pushrods.

Now if you're trying to zing that motor to 7k or greater I would worry

If you had new valves and pushrods I might say replace the rockers, but it's a ford 302 so you know it'll never see much over 5000 rpm.
I'd install the old ones as long as they don't show any unusual wear patterns.

My 17 year old son has a 1989 gt mustang as a first car.

I was testing some things out in the car. I had just driven the corvette and jumped into his. 4,800 rpm and it hit the wall

My 302 based 331ci engine in my mustang made more hp at 2,800 and started coming on at 3,000 at 6,400 it was making 364 at the rear wheel and would run up to the 7,100 rev limiter

Just make sure that no push rods are bent, visually inspect the rockers @ contact points for anything unusual and throw them in. It will be fine.

Good advice above. Push rods are cheap if you replace them.

Are they roller rockers? Either way, they're cheap too if you want to replace them.

Doesn't matter.

It's a Ford Windsor engine. You could overhaul the thing on a gravel driveway, and it wouldn't matter. Playing musical rocker-arms isn't going to cause any trouble.

thanks guys!