Does this look like excessive rocker arm wear?

[madmike]

'68 440, Comp Cams Magnum 280H hydraulic flat tappet cam, with stock pushrods, rocker arms, and rocker arm shafts.  Its a supposedly fresh motor, with a lot of top end noise, that sounds like clattering valves.  When the engine is shut off, I can wiggle most of the rocker arms, not just a little, but a lot.  They move around in three directions:  up and down (perpendicluar to shaft), side to side (parallel with shaft), and I can 'twist' them on the shaft.  The hole in the rocker arm is egg shaped, not round.

I have always thought (I might be wrong) that this style of rocker arm had a some what sloppy fit on the shaft, but this seems excessive to me.  There is almost 0.100" of clearance, roughly, on all of them, as pointed out by the screw driver.  What do you guys think?

[BSB67]

You're probably fine.  The rocker arm runs on the underside of the shaft so the clearance that you point to has no real bearing.  If you are concerned about wear, you'll need to pull the rockers off and inspect the appropriate wear location on the shaft and rocker.  Even if they are worn, it won't really have any impact on how it runs.

[elacruze]

If you don't know exactly how the motor was put together, you can't know why it's noisy. It's pretty unlikely that the rocker arms have worn enough to do that by themselves-it's more likely that the valve protrusion is a little short, or the head gaskets are too thick, or both. If the block and heads were surfaced, the valve lash should be tighter than stock. Perhaps it wasn't machined? In any case, a set of adjustable rockers and pushrods should be your least expensive fix.