Roller Block: Pushrods Rubbing Against Head

Pulling heads I hope? you don't want that metal trash in your engine!!! You might get away without disassembly if you are careful. Tape off the intake and all around the valve springs; cover all you can. Getting crap around the valve heads and guides would be my concern.

BUT, before you do any of that......some thoughts on what you have:

If your rocker to valve tip contact patch is more towards the inside than the outside through the lift cycle from closed to open (see note at end), then what may be going on is that the valves were sunk into the heads when the valve job was done. This will raise the valve tips higher and cause the rocker to contact valve tip closer to the intake side when closed. (Which is what you show in your pix.) It will also make the pushrods ride towards the valve side of the pushrod holes, particularly when the valves are closed. (Which you also show.) And it will raise the retainer and reduce clearance between the retainer and the rocker.

So the valve job done may have sunk the valves into the heads and the valve tips were not ground to compensate (called 'tipping' the valves). One way you might figure this out is the measure the installed height of all the valves springs and compare to what it should be for those heads.

If the installed heights are all tall, then tipping the valves will help the rocker to tip contact locations. But it will hurt the rocker to retainer clearance, and will not fix the spring installed height. The better way IMHO would be to:

• Shim the valve springs to get the right installed height
• Use rocker shaft shims to raise the rocker shafts and get the rocker to valve tip geometry better.
• Adjust pushrod length to match all of this

None of this may completely fix the pushrod to hole clearance. IIRC, the taller roller lifter is going to naturally push the pushrod towards the exhaust side of the pushrod hole as you show. Look at your 308 head's pushrod holes size and that will tell you.

Note on contact patch: For the rocker contact on the valve tip, it is normal for the stamped rockers' contact to move towards the inner edge of the valve stem at 0 lift. The contact point will 'walk' across the tip towards the outside as the lift increases. The contact patch WILL be wide....that's in the design of the stamped rocker system, so you cannot think about the contact patch in the same way with stamped rockers as you do for roller rockers. You just don't want it to be waaaay off center.