guide plate question-please read

[Metal Militia]

Hey guys! I broke down and had my heads milled and drilled to accept 7/16 rocker studs. I bought edelbrock guideplates, and comp cams pro magnum roller rockers. The problem(s) i am having is this:

One guideplate stud hole on every guideplate had to be enlargened in order to get the studs to screw into the heads while the guide plate was in place. The blue arrow in the picture below shows which hole had to be oblonged. The machine shop i brought it to(powered by Ford) said that i would have to do this. Is this normal?

The slots to keep the pushrods in alignment doesn't come close to centering the rocker arm over the valve stem. The Intake rocker arm tip is off to the left side of the valve stem and the Exhaust rocker arm tip is off to the right side of the valve stem. Now, i took one of the guideplates and removed some metal from the outer slot edge(yellow arrow) and the rocker arm is now centered, but it now has EXTRA room to move left and right. The Red arrow in the picture shows where metal needs to be added to move the rocker arm in the right place without having all that extra room. I assume this isn't ok to run the engine with those enlarged pushrod guide slots?

Sorry for the length of the post, I am just a bit confused about paying $125 for machine work on a perfectly good set of heads that won't be able to be used anymore.. Is there a company that specializes in single guideplates, like one for each stud unlike one big plate for 2 studs?


thanks for your time
dave