1600 Single Port - Pushrods are loose

[Kyler]

My buddy and I are building a 1600 single port motor for my Bug. I finished adjusting the valves and found that the pushrods aren't pressed tightly into the rocker arm cups. For example, when the engine is positioned to fire at cylinder 2, the valves for 2 are tight, but both the exhaust and intake pushrods for cylinder 1 move around freely. Each cylinder does this depending on the firing position. One thing I've noticed is that the studs where you install the rocker assembly do not stick out of the nuts holding them in. In fact they aren't even flush. The length of the bottom case studs are roughly 240 mm.

I'm not sure if the pushrods or case studs are too short, or something is caught in the rocker arm assembly, or the rocker arms are set up wrong. Hopefully it isn't something involving the engine internals or the cylinders. Any ideas of what it could be would be appreciated.

[Multi69s]

Since you say that the pushrods are either too tight or loose at the wrong times, the first thing that I would do is to readjust the valves. You might have gotten off of sequence. Common occurrence.
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[Kyler]

So I went ahead and re did the valves. This time, I pretended that the drive shaft was 180 degrees off. I started where cylinder 3 would normally be on the distributor rotor and adjusted cylinder 1, followed by 2 and so on.

After I did the valves, I moved the crank pulley and stopped at each cylinder to check all the pushrods. All of them were firmly in place this time, and moving as they should be. Would this mean the distributor drive shaft was in fact 180 degrees off?

[kreemoweet]

The pushrods are supposed to be loose when their corresponding valves are closed.
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[Kyler]

How loose? Before the pushrods were moving freely up and down between the pushrod tubes. Now, depending on which cylinder you’re on the pushrods will just be able to spin freely, but won’t sloppily move back and forth

[kreemoweet]