[The Greek]

Have any of you guys or gals had any problems with unusual push rod wear using the Ford Racing M-6564-A50 "Cobra" 1.7:1 ratio roller rocker arms? The wear is always on the rocker end of the push rod. The engine that I have is one of the old Ford crate engines. It is the 5.0 roller cam (B-303) with the cast iron GT-40 heads. The valve springs are the originals and there's plenty of oil flowing through the push rods and out from the rockers. The oil is Shell Rotella T full synthetic 15w-40. The push rods started with the originals and then a set of O.E. spec Melling.

I'm finding the wear to start after about 1000 miles and to be like pitting. This only started after installing the mentioned rockers. I did some upgrades to the engine which included a high volume oil pump and 7 Qt. oil pan, so lubrication shouldn't be a problem.

Being a mechanic by trade for many years, valve adjustment, push rod length and any other engine set up isn't a problem. It's the rockers at the push rod socket. I'm wondering if I got a set out a bad production run of rocker arms where the machining is out of spec. or if this is common problem when using a cam with more than .500 lift? I do have a set of hardened tipped chromemoly Lunati push rods to go back in if it's worth it.

Any constructive input would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[89coupe]

Can you post some pictures of the pushrod and its mating rocker?

 

[The Greek]

Sorry, but I'm not equipped for doing that. To further explain how the wear looks, it's ring shaped, about 1/16" wide and looks as if it has been made by a tiny rough textured grinding stone. It's slightly larger than the oil hole. There's a term for what the wear resembles and it's called metal galling, but this would happen with a lack of lubrication and/or extreme pressure. Neither of which are present.