Roy Gavin
Well travelled
- Location
- Adelaide Australia
Yep, used a dial gauge too - some manufacturers like Norton and Velocettle gave valve timing as valve lift at TDC so you needed the gear anyway, as they didn't have marks to line up.Thank you, I must have misunderstood. When someone references a roller rocker arm to me that is a roller at the valve stem end.
We normally use wire gauges at work which prevents incorrect gap readings associated with valve stem wear and that's what I use on my engines that require adjusters after they have enough mileage on them for wear to be a factor, but that usually take quite a bit of mileage with modern engine and valve metallurgy. If an engine is low time/mileage regular gauges are fine.
The most accurate measurement method and one which one of our engine manufacturers requires, is to use a dial gage on the rocker arm to measure travel. Wear does not affect that method and is the most precise, when required.
Some SOHC motors had an asymmetrical cam which stopped at the correct correct spot anyway, but nice to check.
You also needed to measure the end float on the crank, etc, so a dial gauge was pretty essential if you worked on old Brit iron.