41ApacheWarParty

Well I could not get the first set to fit in my 1998 ls1 heads due to so many perimeter bolt bosses in the way and not wanting to literally grind and hog out like 10 pounds of aluminum from each head I switched to these full shaft mount roller rocker arms...
these look even nicer than the first set that sadly would not fit. I'm impressed..... these are beautiful!!! like jewelry for my valve train.
I just hope these fit better.
I'll go do a fast test fit to see if I'm in the same predicament with the first set but these look like they will fit from eyeballing it.

Set that did not fit

New full shaft roller rocker set. Hope these fit well...

41ApacheWarParty

Look like we will not have any issues with these. They are not bolted down and not centered on the valves but again just making sure I have enough clearance and I do... these 1997...1998 heads with the perimeter bolts are a big pain in the *** vs the center bolt heads and valve covers that most of you all are running.

Jay

99 Black Bird T/A

iTrader: (4)

Jay,



The new rockers have to have better fitment than those great big gold ones!

Edit - looks like they'll fit. Good deal 👍

How's the other parts of the motor upgrade coming along?

41ApacheWarParty

I plan on doing the oil pump after work today. I see I have to loosen the oil pan and drop the front about an inch and i plan on using a Zip Tie on the bolt that holds the pickup tube to the bottom of the oil pump and slowly work it out. I did purchase a reinforcement girdle for it, so putting it back will probably be a pain in the rump too but that oil pump looks just beat, its black for some reason. Like it was painted with crummy paint or something. But I did get a new Melling standard volume high pressure pump so hopefully that will help keep everything sufficiently lubricated and a little bump in pressure from idle on up will add a little extra confidence.
Oh get this, I dropped one of the Flat top recessed bolts for the ICT valley plate since I am moving the knock sensors to the sides of the engine where the oil pan bolts to the bottom of the block so I pulled the knock sensors out of the valley. I was checking fitment of the plate and the one screw fell off the magnet I use on the nose of the car to hold hardware and I know stainless steel is minimally magnetic but I lost the one bolt and looked in every spot on the nose of the car and for the life of me I can't find it. Looked for over 3 1/2 hours and said F it and went to Lowes, Home Depot, Auto Zone, Pep Boys, and Ace Hardware and NO ONE carried a flat top M8 1.25 bolt at any length. I say to the guy at Home Depot, you have an aisle 200 feet long and 25 feet high on each side with SAE Bolts and hardware and 6 drawers of a tool box type cabinet for every metric item they carry and the entire world swapped to metric in 1982 and by 1996 every car Mfg and furniture company and everyone on earth had migrated to metric and this is all you have, 6 drawers vs. a few gazillion square feet of SAE stuff........... Don't get me wrong ... I HATE Metric.!!!! Pain in the *** to me. But when you go to build a deck or something on the back of your house does it matter if you use a 6 inch long metric bolt or SAE bolt? NO. Anyway that is just annoying to me so I had to order bolts from Amazon and they got here and worked perfectly. So problem solved. I think I am going to take a few minutes and paint the front and sides of the block I can reach from under the headers to try to prevent any rust and corrosion now that I know its Iron and not aluminum and with a few layers of clear it should be simple to wipe any dirt and oil and grime off of it. Also give the polished and chrome stuff a nice color to offset the shiny stuff.
SO its coming along. I sent my computer out to Frost and I emailed them but they have not emailed me back so I laid out all of the items in the work sheet so I hope they dont run into any issues but my thing was, I dont know if that is the stock computer from this car or not. Or if it came with the engine....... Hopefully they will get back to me and let me know if they encountered any issues and I was sure to give them all the part numbers for the items such as the card style 4 inch MAF sensor and housing, the intake and throttle body sizes and type, knock sensor relocation, the removal of the EGR and Air Pump, removal of 2 of the 4 O2 sensors in the exhaust, remove the Skip Shift stuff for the transmission, of course the CAM specs and all the stuff that came with it along with the head stampings and block specs with it being the 5.3 and the wiring harnesses I got for a few things and all that. I also asked them to let me know if there were any parts I got that i needed to change out or if I need to do anything different with my build or not. I don't want to play ping pong with my computer sending it back to them over and over and over to get the tune just right. I am sure no one would want to go through that either.
So far a few minor set backs but nothing horrible. When I get my computer back hopefully next day or two since I sent it to them Saturday, it got there Monday so I hope to get it back soon and I can hopefully have the car fired up this weekend.
We will see. I already swapped the cam after I finished the stupid valve springs. I did the rope method and that resolved all my issues there, the valves were dropping down too far with the bowl type pistons just enough that the bolts were bending trying to get the top of the valves to stick up high enough to get the keepers on. The rope method resolved that and kept the valves up high enough that I only needed to compress the springs about 3/4 of an inch to get the keepers installed and once I learned that the last 5 sets I got done in about an hour with no more bent bolts. Learning curve I guess.
Ill keep chuggin away.
Jay

grinder11

iTrader: (1)

Those are NICE!!! As for the perimeter valve cover bolts, who knows why GM went backwards on this. They had perimeter covers on the Gen 1 SBC for the first 30 years of production, then finally went to the centerbolt design. So a clean sheet of paper LS1 comes out, and back to perimeters!! Who knows? Seems like you may actually have fewer interference points with the perimeter covers, though.....

EDIT!!!!! Is it just me, or are the roller tips completely off the valve stems??? Looks like they'll push on the retainer, NOT the stem tips!! Maybe an optical illusion?

MuhThugga

What brand are those gold ones? They look like Yella Terra knock-offs with runs in the finish.

99 Black Bird T/A

iTrader: (4)

Expanded and flipped one of the original pictures posted.

Definitely "looks" like the roller will be on the retainer. He mentioned rockers aren't bolted down or centered yet, just tested for interference with head and valve cover.

Hopefully he'll update soon.

Che70velle

iTrader: (6)

And from the pics…it’s a bad angle…it looks to me as though it’s still gonna be close to the valve cover bolt risers. Hopefully he mocks this up before just thinking it will work. Adjustable rockers makes setting up a hydraulic valvetrain tough in my opinion. With those perimeter bolt heads, I’d stay stock rockers personally.

​​​​​​….edit….You know, from a distance, these perimeter bolt heads look almost exactly like a Ford 302 head. I realize that the Ford head will ALMOST bolt on the LS block, but I never realized that the perimeter bolt heads looked the part also.

01CamaroSSTx

iTrader: (3)

Those rocker arm stands must be mounted to the head incorrectly because those roller tips are nowhere near the tips of the valves and I'm not so sure the locking nut will clear the underside of the valve cover either. I honestly don't think they're going to work with the perimeter bolt heads.

cula8r

iTrader: (2)

That rocker kit sells for around 300.00.
"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten"
I ended up using stock rockers with BTR TK002 kit and changed to 12 point bolts.

Onbusy

iTrader: (4)

They're not bolted and not centered, he just put them there for the visual.

grinder11

iTrader: (1)

I ended up doing the same. Stock LS7 rockers, PAC duals, BTR TK002 V2 (later style) trunnions, which replaced a TOTALLY worn out (under 20,000 miles!) JUNK Comp "upgrade." Uh, yeee-ah....

01CamaroSSTx

iTrader: (3)

Been there and done that!

grinder11

iTrader: (1)

Yup. Must be hard on some vendors conscience to make millions of $$$$$$$ making a pile of

BigBlackCamaro

The TK002 kit https://www.summitracing.com/parts/btc-tk002nb has a real inner bearing race pressed on the trunnion shaft. Unlike those that have bearings just riding on whatever steel the whole thing is made of.

41ApacheWarParty

Correct I just laid them in there and placed the calve covers over them and now I need to purchase the valve cover spacers that one company makes I think it's a division of Taylor race spark plug wires and it's called a spacer max valve cover spacer. They make 2 thicknesses half inch for $137.00 and 1 inch $157.00 so I'll grab the 1 inch ones if I can find the web page that sold these (i accidentally osed the web page before i could bookmark it and now i cant find it for the life of me...site was some goofy name i cant remember) and the spacers are specifically made for these 1997...1998 perimeter bolt heads/covers for valve train clearance issues. I don't want to grind the insides of my covers with the dual support cross braces on the undersides of them. That's what is touching the rocker arms and interfering on the underside. I would have much preferred to stick with ones that did not have these interference issues but that's the game...problems pop up and need things to solve these problems. My biggest issue at the moment is not this...it's tuned by frost has had my computer for weeks and not a single reply email and I have no clue if I'll ever see my computer again... if it does show up I don't know when that will be. So my car is stuck on the lift for now until my computer gets returned.
okay time to try to find these valve cover spacers and get them ordered. Just pray i can find that site again.
if anyone happens to know what that site is could you please post it up for me. Will be greatly appreciated. Thank you all and once I get this all built and set up proper setup with the included adjustable push rods, shims and all other items needed to get these installed and setup properly, I'll snap a few photos if you all care to see this setup and what issues needed to get resolved.
thank you all gents....
Hope everyone had a great Turkey day holiday and long weekend !!!

Jay...

41ApacheWarParty

I just found the site. Whites pit stop racing or wpsracing.com


https://ls1tech.com/forums/generatio...ng-policy.html
So I'll see if I can get this part number on Amazon so I dont have to get nailed with shipping and handling fees but if not I'll get these on order now so I can get them in a week or 10 days I guess.
thank you all

Jay.

1FastBrick

iTrader: (16)

I believe those are the Harland Sharp LS1 rockers in that Photo.

41ApacheWarParty

they are Pro Comp shaft rocker arms or were, I returned them due to not fitting in the 1997 and 1998 perimeter style LS heads and covers.
I upgraded to the full shaft system as you see in the photos further down which seem to fit better inside the heads but the 1997/1998 valve covers have these cross supports on the underside that hit the rocker arms so I ordered 1 inch spacers for these perimeter style heads/covers to have the covers sit up 1 inch higher for clearance and not run into any further issues with these parts. I got the rockers from summit so I will do a full review with a few photos and explain to anyone considering purchasing these that they will need valve cover spacers if they have a 97 or 98 LS engine and put the part info for the spacers for the perimeter style heads so it makes it easier for anyone following my path what they need and where to get it and the cost so they know what is all involved. I did a full review on the gold pro comp rockers and added a few photos and again explained that 97/98 perimeter heads are more difficult to work on due to all the bolt bosses inside the head consuming valuable room which can be ground away a little bit for clearance but I personally did

(Continued below the photos)

PRO COMP full shaft style LS rocker arms (again NOT bolted down...just checked the valve cover for clearance) thats why i bought the 1 inch cover spacers from whites pit stop racing (wpsracing.com) so i wont have any space issues going forward


PRO COMP Full Shaft style LS rocker arms in a perimeter style 1997 and 1998 heads.


My build coming along....


My engine build coming along getting ready to finish torquing the harmonic balancer/pulley and then water pump will go back on then ill get the rocker arms setup with the included adjustable push rods and if i need to order a custom set i will have to return the new 7.400 ones i got from the WS-6 store.


My new michigan motorsports coil relocation brackets with freshly cleaned up coils mounted and all wiring harnesses and extensions ready to be mounted and ill make the new spark plug wires i bought from Taylor. I'll make these to the custom lengths i need. Had planned on installing the relocation coil brackets on underside of the cowl under the windshield out of the way off to each side of the top of the intake and run the spark plug wires thru a loom to make everything look clean & well thought out.


(continued from above) i did not want to remove my heads if possible & no way was I going to use a die grinder & hog out a ton of aluminum & let all the shavings get down inside the engine. That's why I opted for the upgraded full shaft rocker setup. These seemed much narrower than the gold ones. Gold ones look like the big fat crane gold rocker arms I've seen in my old chevy big blocks from my first offshore boat that had mildly hopped up 550 hp each 454s with rectangle heads. Those rockers had a lot of meat to them and seemed strong as hell and they glided so smooth on their small shafts I was very impressed with their construction & smooth operation. Shame they were so fat they did not fit in my LS heads. I cannot say if they would fit in regular 99 on up centerbolt style heads/covers but for the $200 they were a great deal for a street car. I am trying to refresh this engine since I don't know where it came from & how many miles are on it & what it's been thru in its service life. (5.3l iron block with stock 98 LS1 perimeter bolt style heads/ LS1 oil pan & LS1 intake & everything else is stock 98 LS1 minus the long block.)
that's the story in a nutshell.

BigBlackCamaro

Thats a weird nutshell.

Those rockers straight on that engine, I'd have waited a while. Like never on those rockers.

And yes, I've run aluminum roller rockers on big blocks a while ago. Now, I'm not even running trunnion upgrades on the LS engines I have.