TheSamba.com :: View topic - Rocker Arm Shafts

Tue Jan 01, 2008 3:17 pm

How do you tell if your rocker arm shafts are worn? I've checked all of the manuals and they usually just say "check them for wear" which doesn't help me much, and the Muir mentioned something about rotating them 180 degrees. I have a '79 FI engine.

Wed Jan 02, 2008 12:29 pm

I am in the process of replacing my push rod tubes and have removed my rocker arms and cleaned them. After cleaning and while cleaning I rotated arms and wiggled trying to find any play, found none so I am sure they are OK. Allittle crudded up at first, but after cleaning with degreaser, I re-oiled them with Same OIL I will put back in motor when complete.

Good luck!
Gordon

Wed Jan 02, 2008 12:53 pm

Tylinol wrote: How do you tell if your rocker arm shafts are worn? I've checked all of the manuals and they usually just say "check them for wear" which doesn't help me much, and the Muir mentioned something about rotating them 180 degrees. I have a '79 FI engine.

Look at 17 and 8 below:

In the engine, the pushrod and the valve spring is always pushing the rocker arm [17] against the headside of the shaft [8].

Look for wear at the area where the arm rides on the shaft on both the arms and shafts. If any wear shows on the shaft, rotate it so the pressure will now go on the 'new' section.

Thu Jan 03, 2008 1:28 pm

I had a rocker amrf shaft with rockers (not VW though) refurbished by these guys:

http://www.rockerarms.com/

And can't say enough good things about the work they did. Good price too.
Only glitch was they shipped to Canada via UPS instead of mail as I had asked, which raised the effective price of the work by 60%.

Each rocker tip was re-ground, each rocker was copper plated, the shaft was either built up and re-turned on a lathe or a new one was supplied, couldn't tell, and the rockers had bronze bushings pressed into them and were reamed to size. This was on a four cylinder in line tractor engine from 1952, so 8 rockers on a shaft, and IIRC was about $110 (before shipping).
Jim

Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:54 pm

Just my opinion...Have you ever looked at a wheel bearing and seen the discoloration and the marks of how they wear?..SOMETIMES the wear patterns are the same.....

Yesterday 11:14 pm

I'm continuing my engine rebuild and cleaned my rocker shafts and found some wear marks. I'm wondering if this is too worn to reuse or if just rotating the shaft 180* will work? Obviously wear will resume quickly as the rockers themselves are equally as scratched on their bores but if it lasts 20k miles I'd be happy enough. Also, you can see in pics 3 and 4 that the bolt holes drilled through the rocker shafts are flared on the side that faces down (towards the head) but not on the top (towards the valve cover); will this cause any problems if reversed?

All four shafts have about the same amount of wear as this one:

Any advice?

Yesterday 11:58 pm

i all you want is 20K bolt that s**t back together.

looking pretty much shot though.
i'd say the same for the arms as well.

you cannot "flip" the shafts on a T4.