440 Blue Hydraulic Rocker Arms

So basically I bought a 440 mild cam motor with hydraulic rockers and I let the motor sit and finally was gonna break cam in. Got it oiled up before firing it and it ran good for 5 minutes then heard clicking and then it died. It fired right back up but I was kinda worried so shut it off quickly after. I waited a few weeks until I had the time to open it up and look and I also remembered the previous owner said the rockers arms needed final adjustments. Then I found that two pushrods were off and two nuts that hold down the pushrods were off. Had one blue rocker arm come in contact with spring and knock a nick in it. FYI my first engine break in and etc. So I’m wondering if I’m good to use the rocker arm that has a nick in it? Also what’s best way to tight up the pushrods bc I heard just loosen them and tightened them then rotate 90 and tighten then after two revolutions then tighten all half a turn to set preload...what do you guys think? Does anyone know what brand these are, and if they have manufacturing procedures? Thank you for any help, pics linked to.
Update found that they are Mopar Performance P4529586 383 400 440 Adjustable Rocker Arms Set Big Block

Unlikely that the valve spring came in contact with the rocker arm unless the loose pushrod got jammed into the spring and pushed it over far enough to hit the rocker. Most likely the pushrod floating around is what marked the rocker. I don't see a fatal flaw on the rocker arm from the pictures you have provided. Are the pushrods effected still straight?

I've been setting hydraulic lifter preload since I was 11 years old, so lesse, that is about 62 years now. Below is one of the simplest, accurate and straight forward explanations on setting hydraulic lifter preload that I've seen...........


https://help.summitracing.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3318/~/how-do-i-set-my-preload?

For Me with a mild juice cam run the HD factory rockers.

my thoughts were +.050" locks causing the retainers to rub the rockers? maybe, maybe not,...? if preload was never set per original owner then the engine shouldn't have been started.

You must familiarize yourself with the perfect circle method or other known acceptable methods of adjusting the rocker arms. Hard to say but I don’t see damage enough to not use them but again, hard to tell from pictures.

I never seen Mopar Performance rockers with no LOGO or ratio stamped on them. Maybe Proform??

My thought was Proform.

Well I decided to look inside the valley and saw that a rod was thru one of the top of lifters and found the cup and vent on the side of valley but the clip was still in lifter. I’m pretty sure plunger and spring is still in lifter, but no sure if I have to go fishing for metal. But lucky only one and like I said I think I got all the pieces hopefully.

Like questioned in post 4, can you say if you did or not check the rocker adjustment before attempting this initial start up? If not, this could be the reason all of this happened, so at least you know nothing mechanically failed to cause this.

Bobzilla said:

Like questioned in post 4, can you say if you did or not check the rocker adjustment before attempting this initial start up? If not, this could be the reason all of this happened, so at least you know nothing mechanically failed to cause this.

Click to expand...

Yeah didn’t check before start up.

From this pic, I’d say the main culprit here was the adjuster screw backing off.

If the bottom of the damaged lifter looks good, I’d swap in a new one, and then reset the lifter preload on all of them to 1/2-3/4 turn.