318 hydraulic lifter preload.

A bit of a rant...........

Stock engine in my 72 Dart Swinger. It has 117k miles on it. Doing a top end rebuild. I ported out the heads using the info I gathered here (thanks for that), new cam and lifters ( high energy comp cam and lifters), new push rods. Using the original rocker arms and rocker arm shaft. This problem all started when I noticed one of the rockers was what seemed to me a bit too loose, then came the education about preload etc. I have a couple of lifters that have less than .006 preload, it may indeed be .000 preload. I've had so many people not know what the hell I'm talking about and say I'm making more of it than I should be.

From what I recall reading, the push rod preload should be between .030 -.060. Why do these people that have a lot of experience seem to not know anything about this?

I never intended to do a complete rebuild on this 318, money would be better spent rebuilding a 360. But since it's what I have and is numbers matching to the car, I felt it was at least worth refurbishing as long as I didn't have to do a complete rebuild. That being said........
Now that I've bough new pushrods that I didn't intend on buying, it looks like the only way to rule out the head not being assembled correctly is to buy new rocker arms as well. More money at an engine I wanted to keep the costs down on. (I'll bet this happens to a lot of people.)

I suspect the valve heights are not correct. One lifter/valve in question is #2 ex. If I lay a straight edge across the two valves next to it I get a .010 difference in height on #2 ex. It is shorter. Guy that rebuilt the head said that is not enough to worry about. The more I look into this the more I'm inclined to disagree.

.030 - .060, Is this the correct amount of preload?