Why to use hardened pushrods....
 

I didn't know my Edelbrock heads had hardened valveguides. Neither did my mechanic, who will take no blame for any of this even though I trusted him to know what he was doing. Whatever. So yeah, the valve guides sawed through the pushrods. Every single pushrod has heavy wear marks...they were all on the verge of breaking. This one finally did. On the bottom is a piece of the valve guide that finally broke.

I think you mean guide plates. The valve guides are what the stem of the valve ride in.

So yeah, you are supposed to use hardened pushrods when using guideplates. Anybody who claims to be a mechanic should know this. Its engine building 101.

Andy

Those aren't valve guides, those are pushrod guide plates. At any rate, anytime you have a pushrod guide plate, it requires the use of a hardened pushrod to avoid what exactly happened to you. Any mechanic worth his weight in salt would have known that when he installed the heads. Chalk it up as an expensive lesson learned and have a reputable engine building shop do the repair work. If those were the stock pushrods, they probably weren't the correct length anyways.

There are three situations where you would not need hardened push rods:

(1) when using stock 5.0L style bolt down (pedestal mount) rockers

(2) when using the old Ford style rail rockers (a small part of the rocker hangs down on both sides of the valve tip to keep the rocker aligned with the valve tip)

(3) when using shaft mounted rockers (i.e. Jessel system)

Otherwise, when using stud mounted rockers it is alway necessary to use push rod guide plates and hardened push rods. Like the other's said.... engine building 101 ;)

Yeah, my fault about saying 'valve guides'. I was working on the damn thing all day and very tired by the time I posted all these messages....

And yeah, supposedly this guy is the 'Mustang expert', everybody recommended him. But he won't take any responsibility for this one, so he just lost my business.

Take any mustang parts magazine to him and show him in the pushrod section where it states " Hardened Pushrods must be used with guide plates". Its all over the place. You dont even have to be a "mechanic". Are you shure he is not a former Chevy mechanic? lol, but even they would know about this one...:rolleyes: I would get money back from him. He messed up.

NO PHUCK"N WAY

Dont feel bad I nearly did the same thing.