One of our forum members has taken the SOHC plunge, and purchased what sounds like an early engine with the non-adjustable rocker arms. He sent me an email asking about availability of lash caps of various thicknesses, in order to be able to set the lash. Since I've never used adjustable rockers I'm not much help on this. I've been told that people buy standard lash caps and grind them to fit on a valve stem tip grinding setup, but depending on the valve stem height, cam base circle, valve seat depth in the head, etc. there is a wide variation in thicknesses that could be required. In fact, a few years ago at the PRI show, Barry R and I bumped into Ohio George Montgomery, and he told us that he had to use lash caps as thick as 0.280"! I don't even know where you'd get a lash cap that thick as a starting point. Can anybody shed some light on this issue of acquiring lash caps in various thicknesses? Barry, I know you've had to do this before...
Another potential issue is the factory rockers, which use a roller wheel that is crowned in the middle; as I understand it, this was done to work properly with the cast iron cams used in the original SOHC engines. Again I have never used the factory SOHC rockers, so I wonder how these crowned roller wheels would hold up on a new billet cam, like the ones available from Comp. The T&D rockers that I use don't have a crowned roller wheel, so that is not an issue with the aftermarket parts.
Any information on this is appreciated - Jay