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Home grown solid rocker shafts
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bugguy1967
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 2:57 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

If you have the skill, do it. The German shafts are stronger than $60 shafts anyway. I know this from machining both. Aluminum is adequate. Should 25mm O.D., I think. Use shims to align rockers. While you're machining stuff, narrow the mounts about 1mm on each side.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 3:19 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Amen to that. You can tell the difference the second the cutter kisses the surface.
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modok
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 6:04 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Bolt together rocker shafts are very popular, like aluminum pulleys Evil or Very Mad
But they are not necessary most of the time.
I've seen the ends of the bolt together shafts fall off 3x more often than a stock clip failing.
The SPRING washers often break, but the hairpins clips are OK most of the time, at least up to 250lb open pressure.

At one time I though the rocker shafts would be "stronger" without the grooves in it, and that's true.....but rocker shafts don't break, so that KIND of strength is no issue. The sheer strength of valve train is almost never a problem because what IS important is rigidity.
If parts are rigid enough to work well then then strength takes care of itself, usually several times stronger than necessary.

The grooves for the clips or the holes in the shaft have negligible reduction in stiffness so they don't hurt anything really.
Aluminum center spacer should be fine, but also not really any better.

Several times in the past what I did was take a steel tube and weld that to the shaft for the center spacer. I cut grooves in the tube ends 180 apart and that was where the weld goes. 180 apart so you end up kinda straight, welding will warp the shaft but actually it doesn't need to be perfect. Then trimmed the ends square to the shaft in the lathe. This was easier than making a spacer at the time and also improved the stiffness of the rocker shaft.
Now I see you can buy 26mm OD by 18mm ID aluminum tube on amazon for cheap, so, that's nice.

Not sure if I have a point but I suppose in conclusion I'm not going to spend money on any rocker shaft besides stock unless it's stepped big in the middle. Just nothing to gain. In fact making the job harder Laughing
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oprn
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 7:04 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Thanks Modoc! Dad and I have been into mostly stock air cooled VWs since about 1967 or so and have never seen a stock spring clip on a rocker shaft fail. I have seen some that had obvious wear on them where they contact the shims but no failures. If I were building a 200 HP 7K rpm monster then maybe yes put bolts in the ends.

As for changing up to circlips... ok... might do that... we will see. I have seen enough of those fail over the years though on other applications. Or I might safety wire the ends of the stock clips. Again I am not convinced any change is needed with stock valve springs.

As for valve train noise, I know what valve lash noise is and how it sounds. The noise I am interested in eliminating is the intermittent clatter that comes and goes especially on start up and idle. I assume this is from the rockers bouncing sideways on the shaft against the spring washers.

Interesting idea Modoc to weld the spacer in place, no set screws to come loose then. Maybe drill the spacer right through in the center and put a MIG bead in the holes on each side. Then chuck it up in the lathe and tap it straight if it needs it. Another way would be to drill both the spacer and the shaft and use a roll pin. No welding needed.
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2022 8:03 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

yeah not that hard to do. Very Happy
you want quiet then get BETTER quality cam.
My engines with WEB camshafts are quieter than stock.
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 18, 2022 5:47 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

The 1641 is a stock cam but the 1911 is a Web and is the noisier one of the two. I am also going to set the valve lash closer too. Maybe try .004 instead of .006. Both are light weight Buggies so head temps are not that high.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 2:05 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

I broke a stock rocker arm clip but then I was stupid enough to put elephants foot adjusters on the rockers. The extra side force from the elephants foot adjusters being a bit off centre on the valve stem increased the wear ..

Then what I found was that the adjuster slid down the side of the valve stem, the washer wore through, fell off in two pieces , and the clip wore through and snapped.

The exhaust valve being permanently closed caused massive backfiring that shook the flywheel off the crank, as I tried to nurse it off the motorway. It also blew out the manifold boot on the other side of the engine, so I ended up having to drive on one working cylinder and two with a massive air leak so the recovery truck could get a safe working space in front of my bus to load it up.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 8:31 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

oprn wrote:
The 1641 is a stock cam but the 1911 is a Web and is the noisier one of the two. I am also going to set the valve lash closer too. Maybe try .004 instead of .006. Both are light weight Buggies so head temps are not that high.


Do that....but then re-check the lash hot after you warm it up. If you still have ~.0025"-ish and they are more quiet....good deal! Ray
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 19, 2022 10:07 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

SURE try tighter. Maybe it's too tight. .006-.007 works good for me with aluminum pushrods and a web grind, they have about .012 of lash ramp. if I set it tighter it's louder.
But then again I did an engine where the CB cam had almost no lash ramps, maybe they were .004" tall at most, it ran quiet too, set TIGHT lash, but the whole valve train was ALL top quality stuff just near perfect.

It's not just one thing.
Pushrod cups loose it the lifter, or the rockers loose on the shaft, side play, or the pushrod ends not fitting the cups nice, valve adjusters..... that can all give you some lash VARIATION when running.
I noticed sometimes it took a while for the pushrods to wear into the rockers or lifters and get a SMOOTH fit, but if they are almost perfect fit from the start then they don't wear much.
More like.....those 'sometimes" were just not very good parts Mad
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:20 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Thanks! I will play with those ideas... once it warms up some. -37*C this morning so the focus will be on firewood today!

I have also wondered about setting the intakes closer than the exhausts being as the exhaust valves run hotter. Say .004 intake and .005 exhaust. Not sure if this is a valid line of thought or not. VW never did that.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2022 2:40 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

I used to make these from stock shafts for the 36ers: treated aluminum spacers, hacked the ends off and threaded them for metric hardware, made endcaps, narrowed the clamping rings, and supplied shims.
Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2022 3:57 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

oprn wrote:
Thanks! I will play with those ideas... once it warms up some. -37*C this morning so the focus will be on firewood today!

I have also wondered about setting the intakes closer than the exhausts being as the exhaust valves run hotter. Say .004 intake and .005 exhaust. Not sure if this is a valid line of thought or not. VW never did that.


Yes.....that can be common. This is precisely why I set the valves to factory stock 0.006" and run it until fully warmed up and check them full hot.

You are looking to see....at the engine (and especially the heads) hottest normal running temperatures.....how far the valve lash closes up on each valve. It's not uncommon to find one valve out of 8 that has slightly different expansion. But more importantly, at least in my type 4 engine, the exhaust valves tend to close up about 0.0005"-ish more than the intake valves.

It's not uncommon to end up setting exhausts 0.001" looser than the intakes whe. You are making them tighter than the factory setting.

Pretty much on mine, I find that they never get tighter than about 0.0025" with a 0.004" setting when fully warmed up. That's just fine.

All of this depends on a stack up of variables....the quality and material of your valves, the cam, what kind of adjusters etc.

By the way, I did not start doing this type of adjusting to make my valves more quiet. I was working to get a more accurate valve lash because I run D-jet injection. It is VERY sensitive to excessive valve lash and variable valve lash.....at low speeds.

Being able to get the lash more uniform made a significant difference in tuning the lower end of the fuel mixture. It also made the valves "slightly" more quiet.....but by no .ore percentage than Porsche swivel feet and solid spacers.

Each one of these mods made the valvetrain a little more quiet....but combined....it runs and tunes a lot better with D-jet. Ray
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oprn
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 23, 2022 5:01 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Thanks Ray! Looks like we may be getting out of the deep freeze first of next week for a few days. Then I can start the old David Brown and blow a trail out to the hay shed to move a Buggy into the garage.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 6:10 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Here is the follow up. I got the snow out of the way, sand rail in the garage and the home grown rocker mod finished. I deviated from advice given here in a couple ways. The first being that due to a lack of either aluminum or steel in an appropriate size without robbing the drive axles out of the tractor I used bronze bushings from the local industrial parts store and machined them to suit. I did not fasten them to the shaft as I cannot see any harm coming from them rotating.

The second thing which will get a few backs up is that I reused the stock clips on the ends. There are two reasons, first is that with my limited machining experiance I did not have to deal with trying to make accurate snap ring groves in a hard surfaced shaft. The second reason is that despite what others have experiance, in 20 years of running 12 different stock air cooled VWs in our family I have yet to see a stock clip fail. Stock cams, stock valve springs. Maybe this will be the first? At any rate I will keep a close eye on them.

All set up and shimmed to zero side clearance on all rockers. Just a nice light touch to move them without any valve spring pressure. Turns out this is super easy to do. The two intake rockers just have one shim each, then I sized the brass spacers to take out all the play, with the whole thing assembled and on the head, put 4 stock shims on one end, clip on, slide the rocker shaft all the way toward the open end (yes there is enough end play due to the rocker shaft holes being larger than the studs they go on, tighten the rocker nuts to hold it all and you only have one end to shim! So - just one shim adjustment per side.

All back together with a fresh .004" valve lash adjustment and start 'er up. Pretty pleased with the results! Well worth the effort as this is beyond any doubt the quietest air cooled VW valve train in my memory!

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


The next victim will be the 1911 in my street Buggy! The valve train noise on it at idle is quite frankly - a bit embarrassing!
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 8:40 pm    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Two thumbs up. Should work great.
Middle rockers look aftermarket......cb?
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 12:03 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

oprn wrote:
The noise I am interested in eliminating is the intermittent clatter that comes and goes


Laughing Laughing

Nice work. Cool
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 4:39 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

modok wrote:
Two thumbs up. Should work great.
Middle rockers look aftermarket......cb?

Thanks all!

Good eye Modoc! Unfortunately they are EMPI brand 1.25 rockers. Quite soft compared to the stock rockers so I will see how they last. I am also a bit concerned that they hit more toward the top of the valve stem but when mixing 1.1 and 1.25 rockers it's a compromise?
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 5:32 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Good Job Merv, Cool
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 7:53 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

Thanks Mike, especially for your help. The shims worked out great. I ended up only using 5 of them so lots left for future engines!
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 8:06 am    Post subject: Re: Home grown solid rocker shafts Reply with quote

It's cheap insurance to use some safety wire to bind the ends of the spring clip together. I do this on my 36hp, with a solid spacer in the middle to eliminate the big spring.
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