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Oh my what fun that was..... So here the saga goes. When I got my intake and valve covers off it was about 3 hours into it. I had an auto fanatic that was doing this for me but I could not keep my hands clean. He was so good I subsequently hired him for assembly on our other stuff at my work.

Turns our that the year on my truck, '02 the studs for the rockers are the same as the viper motor not previous years. The viper is threaded 3/8-16 for the studs and the crower kit is 5/16-18. So after several hours I got someone on the phone at crower to tell me that I need to return that kit and order the viper kit. No go, I had already disassembled my motor and removed a set of rockers. In my mind this was happening that day. So I went ahead and made my own mounting hardware for my motor. After examining the adjustment and locking mech of the crower I decided that it would not be an issue. So I made some studs with the 3/8 lower threading I needed and tig welded a flange nut to create the stud. These are torqued in to 24LBs and then I milled some grade 9 nuts to fit the inside of the crower assembly and then locked that in place with a jamb nut and high temp thread locker.

My car guy was worried about this geometry as in his mind creating custom internal motor hardware was suspect. Once we got the motor back together and started it I was surprised that I had a lifter noise and scoured the forums looking for answers. In short most of the people had learned that to get rid of this the rockers needed to be tightened a 1/4 turn more than crower specifies. So I took a road trip and lived with the noise for now. I got about 10% better milage. The truck got 13.5+ at the mandatory 4 over cruise control setting of my road trips between SLC, UT and CA. This trip was to San diego and at times the Average econ. read almost 15. This is at an average speed of well over 75.

Now back home, yesterday I cracked it back open with my guy doing most of the heavy lifting as it were. And discovered that we had mis adjusted a few of the rockers and they were a bit loose, so we readjusted the rockers and checked each one as we moved the crank fully through the range. About 1/3 needed tweaking. But on the plus side, our high temp thread locker held so good that trying to loosen them caused the main stud to come loose. I was happy to see this as one of the complaints about the crowers are that they come loose. After readjusting them a bit tighter, just a hair mind you. All is quiet. In fact these have no real discernible change in engine internals save the exhaust noise is a bit more "muscle" sounding.

Long and short of it is that once the covers are off it is impressive looking at the run of 10 valves each side. I would not hesitate to do this again. The only wild card is v-10 owners not knowing where dodge made the change from 3/8 to 5/16 stud mounts to know which kit to order. As the viper kit uses a 7/16 rocker yoke not the 3/8 that the magnum uses, in theory. But mine is an '02 and maybe others out there that have done this can help us narrow the change. Once I got it back together you can tell that there is a noticeable change in accel through the range. It pulls harder all the way up, and more consistently through the range. That combined with the fuel savings over my business trips I figure these will pay for themselves within the year, assuming I can keep my foot out of it.

I have 3.55 gears so others out there will get better acel than me for the short term. I will be switching it up to 4.10's soon. I already cant goose it to much in a corner so 4.10 should make it insane. This is a worth while investment for those not wanting to go full cam, and they are more readily available. Also, instead of extrude honing my intake manifold I am considering creating a custom one from scratch. I will have images of the rocker job posted to my website within the hour. mk1manufacturing.com if anyone has any questions my email is matt at mk1studio dot com.

On a political note, after Fiat was awarded ownership of chrysler by um , er fiat, I decided it was time to wrap my head around the idea of owning a Ford truck. I couldn't, so now I am dedicated to the task of making this truck all it can be, cost be damned as a new truck is 600+ per month. So lets see what I can get from this for less $$ than that.