I was cleaning and going over the rocker assemblies from the magnum heads I bought (disassembled) and noticed something... all the rocker arms and pivots have two angled oiling grooves in a \ / shape on their respective contact faces but on half the rocker arms the grooves are oriented 180° / \ from the other half.

Is there a specific place the / \ rocker arms go vs the \ / rocker arms?

How do you orient the pivots in relation to the grooves in the pivot and rocker arm? Do you match them up, oppose them, or does it not matter?

I can post some pictures if nobody has any idea what I'm talking about.

 

Here's some pics of what I mean.

The first pic you can see the differences in the rockers.

The second pic is some of the pivots in no particular order or orientation. They all look the same to me.


[IMG]local://upfiles/72844/05FEB73ED6614C839AE359268284379E.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]local://upfiles/72844/4C7EB95C9F36432C810F453D312FB134.jpg[/IMG]

 

Are you sure the rockers are grooved and don't have raised wear pattern? Can't tell from the pix. If it's a bump the rockers are worn. I've seen ridges worn in other makes of rockers. If it is a groove, I'd put 'em in an x. This would expose more surface to oil.

 

Yeah good call lugnuts, it's gotta be a wear pattern. I'm an idiot.

 

Glad to help if I can.

 

also check them to make sure they arent valve specific such as 1 rocker is for the intake and one for exhaust like the shaft mounted system

 

I'm having trouble answering that question mrbelvedere. My casting #'s are 53006671 and 53020466. I can only think of 3 reasons for the difference in the way the pivots were positioned.

1. The factory changed the orientation between the 2 castings
2. The pivots are reversed for intake/exhaust rockers
3. The pivots are put on the rockers randomly and I just happened to end up with 8/8

In any case I'd feel better knowing why before I bolt them up.

 

the oil groove lines don't look like wear patterns to me

It might be worth a trip to the dealership parts counter to look at the newest version of the Magnun Rocker Arms to see which groove direction they have

Chrysler has had problems with the Magnum rocker arms
...but if memory serves me it was at the pushrod socket
where wear was excessive

Those wear grooves spread the oil for the pivot bearing
and I don't remember anything in the past about problems there

The Magnum rocker arms are a copy of the older AMC rockers which were themselves a copy of the GM pedestal mount rockers...except the GM's had 3/8ths inch mount bolts.

It might be interesting to look at AMC or GM rockers at the pivot bearing seat to see how those oil grooves are arranged.

The oil gets to the pivot bearing by 'splash' from that little tab at the pushrod socket,
so it might be possible that oil hits the crevices above the pivot more on the inside or outside and this might have been changed to improve lubrication.

 

one last thought....
our FSM manuals don't have the corrections pasted in them
so while if you go to the dealership you might ask to look at their paper copy
of the Ram FSM for your year.

the dealerships get a larger 'sticker' of corrections to a page
that they tape onto the old page of the FSM manual
covering over the old page with the new instructions

good luck

keep us informed if you find out anything

 

I checked with the local mopar dealer and they couldn't find anything in the FSM or bulletins about pivot orientation. The best they came up with was "Install the same way as removed".

Very insightful.