HELP! Rocker Fell Off

[Jiveturkey]

Ok so i just got my SR running 2 days ago and on a test drive it started missing real bad. I pulled the valve cover and the intake rocker on cylinder 4 came off. Problem is I could only find one of the 2 metal bearings/bushings that sit on top of the valves in the head. I found the smaller of the 2, i think the second one may have fallen in a rear oil passage. I'm going to do what I can to try and find it but I may have to get a new one. Anyone know what this part is or ever have this problem before. Any info is appreciated.

[Ichi-Go]

It happens on all SR's becuase they are JDM tight. Get rocker arm stoppers.

[Jiveturkey]

I'm not sure but I think the piece I'm missing is called a valve shim. Anyone know how I figure out what size valve shim I need? Like I said I'm missing the one from the furthest intake valve, aka closest to the rear of the engine.

[kensreliableb18b]

if i were you i'd do whatever it takes to find that other shim that you're missing (that includes possibly taking out the larger oil pan). its gotta be in the motor somewhere. put everything back and invest in ras if you havent already done so. gluck

[punxva]

yea u dont want that shit floating around in your oil, or your asking for trouble

[VitaminT]

I think you can just pull the lower pan and lower windage tray but you might have to pull the upper pan. I would find it before going any further.

I can't remember which one is toward the front of the motor and which is to the back but one is smooth on top and one has a groove to center the rocker. Which one did you loose?

[Jiveturkey]

The one with the groove, its toward the back. Are those shims? I thought shims were something else. I'm going to try a couple things tonight to see if I can find it. I really don't want to take the upper pan off, but I may have to break down and do it. I've already taken the lower pan and windage off and no luck so far.

[Silverbullet]

It happens on all SR's becuase they are JDM tight. Get rocker arm stoppers.


umm to clear up the air, it does NOT happen to all SRs. It vary rarely happens. I know many people including myself who rev the shit out of SRs with no RAS. Of course i plan to get a pair but its not a common thing to happen.

[wootwoot]

Well, the valve train is the weak spot for the sr20, do whatever you can to find that thing even though it sounds lame. The best thing to do if you can get a spare head would be to fully build it in the mean time. This incidents are even somewhat common with RAS but they keep the rocker arm from atleast flying around and causing super bad damage. Things to do to avoid this in the future
1)RAS (as mentioned and durrrr)
2)solid lifters (hydraulics collapse and arent fast enough!)
3) re shim your head and do all guides, no shims. More work but hey, the sr20 was not decided as a race car motor. "If you are going to treat your car like a race car, prepare it as a race car and expect the maintainence that comes with it"

With finding the lost shim/guide (I'm not sure which you lost from reading your post), get a magnet on a stick and start going into any passage you can. To find out how to reshim your head, get the FSM from zeroyn.com and get reading. Come back with more specific questions later!

p.s. I consider it common for how many people I know that have had it happen. RAS save your ass from the bad stuff happening when it does go wrong though.

[McRussellPants]

Well, the valve train is the weak spot for the sr20, do whatever you can to find that thing even though it sounds lame. The best thing to do if you can get a spare head would be to fully build it in the mean time. This incidents are even somewhat common with RAS but they keep the rocker arm from atleast flying around and causing super bad damage. Things to do to avoid this in the future
1)RAS (as mentioned and durrrr)
2)solid lifters (hydraulics collapse and arent fast enough!)
3) re shim your head and do all guides, no shims. More work but hey, the sr20 was not decided as a race car motor. "If you are going to treat your car like a race car, prepare it as a race car and expect the maintainence that comes with it"

With finding the lost shim/guide (I'm not sure which you lost from reading your post), get a magnet on a stick and start going into any passage you can. To find out how to reshim your head, get the FSM from zeroyn.com and get reading. Come back with more specific questions later!

p.s. I consider it common for how many people I know that have had it happen. RAS save your ass from the bad stuff happening when it does go wrong though.

Mattback has taught you well.

[Jiveturkey]

So I just looked at teh FSM, I have the shim I'm missing the guide. Apparently the guides are all the same so i should just be able to replace it right? Or do I need to replace the shim because it's a new guide?

[wootwoot]

I learned number 3 from Mattback which I have no idea why I diddnt think of it myself. I learned about the valvetrain what not mostly because I had a rocker arm pop out and destroy most of my valvetrain. Not nice =(
Atleast I dont have to worry about ANY valve train now. bwhahah

Reshimming the head is just good to do because of however many miles are on it now, it is definitely out of spec. You dont need to but consider everything said to build a good sr20. If you find your old guide you can reuse it but if not you need to remeasure.

[Jiveturkey]

Well I tried searching the entire upper head with a magnetic wand, searching the lower oil pan and baffle, blowing air through the rear oil passages, fishing around the upper oil pan the best I could with a magnetic wand, running large magnets across the bottom of the upper oil pan, and a couple other minor things but still no luck. The only thing I can do next is drop the upper oil pan which involves removing the entire cross member, more work than I really have time to do right now. I'm seriously thing about just replacing it and hoping the piece makes it down to the oil pan. I did drive it almost a mile after the rocker came off and didn't have any issues but that doesn't mean I won't have a problem in the future. This shit is so frustrating.

So I could just replace all the shims with rocker arm guides? Hmmm, how would that work since RAGs are all the same size? Would I just not need to shim anything?

[Jiveturkey]

So I decided I HAD to pull the upper pan, and there it was sitting in plain view. Now its just a matter of reassembling everything and waiting for my RAS to show up. Still haven't gotten a response on using all guides and no shims. Care to elaborate on how this is done.

[wootwoot]

I'm glad you made the proper decision on doing that. I was cringing everytime you wanted to do it the other way. I'm going to research on how to do that for you and then I'll be back to chime in. Might take a little while because of school. Best thing to do would go to FreshAlloy, start an account, and ask MATT_BACK_VASS the whole deal on it. "i am using my own personal solid lash adjusters. i build them and sell them myself through my side project while in school, performance engines by matt vassallo." That makes me think that going to solid lifters is required for this since he is not using the shims on the rocker arms anymore and is simply doing adjustment through the now solid lifters. Hope I was able to help somewhat!

[Ichi-Go]

I dont understand why solid lifters keep rockers from falling off. Dont the rockers go ontop of the lifters. Maybe I dont know what im talking about.

[wootwoot]

Solid lifters take away movement that hydraulic lifters have. Less movement is less chance of bad things happening. Hydraulic lifters often cannot act as fast as the valvetrain is which is when bad things happen.