I just pulled the CHE rockers off of my wife's car after 3,000 miles and everything looked great. One thing I did notice about her car was the valvetrain is noticeably quieter, I'm not really sure why that is.

I don't have a guesstimate on how long the bushings will last, that's why I will be checking them every few thousand miles until I get a handle on their life. The bushing should be what wears, the problem with the needle bearing style upgrade is when the bearing fails it kills the shaft too. Fyi, the LS7 rockers tend to have a undersized bore and can make the bushing tight. I had to hone several of my rockers to get them to rotate freely. If you don't have the ability to do that you should send them to one of the companies offering the installation service.

If I go that way, I'll have to. Interested to see your findings down the road.

I posted this on another site, but will post here too for opinions.....

I am not a certified engineer, but have done engineering work in the past & was a product designer for years before I became a software product consultant For Siemens PLM Software. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night (LOL).

But Here is my thoughts/concerns.

I worked as a designer for about 5 years for a company that makes turbo chargers. One of the parts in the turbos I worked on was a thrust plate. It looks like this:
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/z20AAO...Ocg/s-l300.jpg

The three pads near the center are the areas where the mating part rides on. The recessed area around them is the area where oil travels. The 3 pads actually have a slight ramp on the leading edge that allows the oil to be “pulled” into the area where the pressure is applied to lubricate it. Obviously the turbo spins in one direction so the oil is constantly pulled onto the pads where it is needed.

These bushings for the rockers also have an oil groove to get the oil between the shaft & the bronze bushing. BUT, this bushing doesn’t make a full rotation around the shaft, so the oil never gets to the bottom side of the shaft where all the pressure is being applied. With only rotating (guessing) 15 degrees, the oil is not drawn down to where it is required, and with the force being applied at the bottom will push together tight & not allow the oil to penetrate.

If you look at standard small block chevy rocker arm pivot balls, they have oil grooves on them that allow the oil to get to the area where there is the most pressure.
http://static.summitracing.com/globa...1401b-16_w.jpg

So even though I like this design compared to the ones with all the little needle bearings, I’m not convinced these are going to work much better.

That’s just my opinion.

Where the load is is going to change as the rocker rotates, there's clearance between the bushing and the shaft so I believe it will get oil to the bottom as the load changes. I have no idea what the bushing material is since both companies were not willing to share that info but I do know there are impregnated bronze materials available that require little to no oil. We make our own cam thrust bushing out of impregnated bronze because the needle thrust bearing flex's, contacts the block thrust plate, and puts a burr on the thrust plate, that bushing gets very little oil and has been fine.

We'll see how it works out maybe it will, maybe it won't, all that I know is the current needle bearing kits available are not the answer. I'm going to pull several rockers off of my engine in the next week or so, press the bushings out, and check them for size against brand new ones. My engine should be the first one to have problems since the lift and ramp angles of the cam are really aggressive it tends to beat the valvetrain parts up.

I will say I like this design best so far, just wondering what the longevity is.

For those still interested, following, doubting, hating, what have you. I pulled several rockers off of my car and pressed the bushings out, they look just fine, a light polishing on the load side but still look new where there's no load. This is after a few thousand miles which is where the needle style would start to show some signs of bearing failure. My car I would consider to be on the extreme since the cam is over .675 lift with aggressive ramp angles, spring pressures are 175-450, the engine is rpm limited at 8,000.

http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/...g.jpg~original

Nice Tim!

Thanks for posting Tim. Have you used an ID mic to get wear numbers? Is this at 3k miles?
Been wondering how they are holding up.

Thanks GDub.
This was after about 2,000 miles of mixed street and racing. I did not check the size but you cannot feel anything, in fact I can still see some of the tool marks in the polished area so I doubt you would be able to measure any difference. I fully expect these bushing to eventually wear out but I would much rather have the bronze dust than the hardened steel dust from the needle bearings.