Rocker arms: quality aftermarket source

[gordon]

I was going to finally put these new STD heads on this motor I've been building but the rocker arms seemed a little loose so I miced em and sure enough they were .006 loose , the book calles for .001-.002 loose so I gave them back to the machinist who honed the old blocks to fit the new rocker arms and messed up making them too loose . He said he would try and fix them , but if he can't I will have to buy new rocker arm assemblys. The question is does anyone know of good source of quality aftermarket rocker arm assembly's? V-Twin sells a set Pt# VT 11-0480 but the quality of sum of their parts I've received in the past has been not very good.
Does anyone know of a good source for these?
Thanks, Gordon

[Cotten]

You probably need new rockerarms (they wear egg-shaped), but the blocks may still be repairable.

After the mating surfaces are ground again to tighten up the bore, have your machinist honefit the mated blocks while torqued together upon a plate as if installed. The fastener stress is significant, and this allows a sweeter fit without bind when torqued down. Use a decent torquewrench; I seem to remember 18 ft/lbs, but I'm getting geezerly.

In theory, the centerline is lowered with each rebuild, but it amounts to the proverbial fartinthedark.

[gordon]

Hi cotten, Thanks for the reply
The rockerms are new aftermarket ones I bought a few years ago for this motor ( its taking years to build this bike) but the rocker blocks are used ones I got at a swap meet. The machinest job was to fit the old blocks to the new rocker arms and what he did was hone the blocks a little too much they came out to .006 loose instead of .001 - .002 that the book calls for.
I gave him back all the rockerarms and blocks and told him they needed to be .001 - .002 loose...............................................................
Well I just got one of them back , he said here try this and let me know how it fits. I bolted it up on one of the heads with some plasti-gauge and it micked out to a perfect .002 (good job) He's now doing the other 3 just like this one and will have them back to me in a couple of days.
How he fixed them was ;
(1) first sanded down the block halves
(2) then milled down a steel shaft that was .001 larger than the rockerarm shaft to use as a fitment tool during the honeing process.
(3) bolted the rocker block halves to a torque plate @ 18 ft lbs
(4) honed the torqued block halves until the .001 fitment tool would slide in
The reason he made and used the .001 over fitment tool was he did not have a bore gauge small enough (.875)
Oh Yea, I don't like the flex lock nuts I bought from V-Twin to bolt the rockerarms on with, they stripped out at only 13 ft lbs! JUNK
Think I'll use some grade 8 and red locktight torqued to 18 ft lbs
Gordon

[Cotten]

That's the way I used to do it, except for a common tapered mandrel for plug gauge.

The mandrel also served for re-cutting the endplay after silversoldering up the slop: hardly worth it.