Hughes rockers
UGH! Yes, it does. But it is wroth every last second you make sure your stuff is on the money. It shows dividends down the road. Your pattern looks freakin fine.
It's dead nuts, man!
But, just so everyone realizes, the point of all this is ensuring that the valve tip is 90* to the rocker arm at 'mid-lift'. As long as that is verified, the 'pattern' does not have to be centered on the valve tip, just as long as it's not too close to the edge. There is a spec for that but I can't remember exactly what it is.
The location of the pattern on the valve tip is not proper verification for the geometrical measurement at mid lift. Proper geometry can and will produce a narrow pattern centered on the valve tip but not always. This is what everyone is looking for though which is where the message gets confusing. You have to verify the angle at the actual mid-lift of the valve.
That's where the AR tool comes in handy, so you can measure the ACTUAL lift of the valve AT THE VALVE. So you set up the tool/plate with a dial indicator on the retainer, set it to 0, rotate the motor over to see if A) you have the same amount of lift at the valve as what it says on the cam card and B) find the mid-lift number. Then you look at the 'geometry' of the rocker arm in relation to the valve tip at that point. Is it 90*?
The other point here is that if you go through all these measurements and checks and find the geometry is in fact way off, you have issues that need to be corrected before proceeding, i.e., the parts are not properly matched. Like using pushrods from another engine...
