Building up roller rockers
Turbo Mini Forums

Happy New Year one and all. Hope you all get your cars on the road in 2016!

I've tried the search button - lots on roller rockers, but not on building them up.
I've got a set of minispares 1.5 roller rockers. It comes with instructions to set the rollers/rockers over the valve stems using this spacer set (which I have):
http://www.minispares.com/product/Classic/C-AEG392.aspx
I've started offering these up as per the instructions but have encountered a problem.
If I build them up using the 'factory' end washer and spring washer, and (initially) the 40 thou shim as per the sheet, there is insufficient rod length to fit anything (shim/washer/spring/split pin) on the other end.
If I remove the spring washer and replace the factory washer with a 40 thou shim I could get them all together and fit a split pin:


Also the holes to receive the split pins (at either end) are too small to receive the factory size split pin so I'm having to fit a thinner one (poor photo to try and illustrate the difference):

Am I okay to dispense with the spring washer and use the 40 thou shim and thinner split pin (how much side loading will these see)? I haven't yet played around with using the 20 thou shims (to centralise the rollers to stems),
Sorry if this is a daft question - I'm nearing the end of the engine build, have never used 1.5 rockers before and don't want to muck it up at this stage!

I never bothered with the shims and spacers etc, just used the original spring setup, if it's good enough for standard rockers to not fail, it's good enough for 1.5s

Edited by Carlzilla on 3rd Jan, 2016.

Just use whatever shim combination will get the rockers in the right place over the valves, plus a shim at each end. Mine's been like that for years.

'Where does the engine go?'