How to measure valve stem to rocker arm pad clearance?

8769bigred · Sunday at 2:50 PM

I'm looking through the 6.9 FSM and there is a little paragraph that says you need to check the valve stem tip clearance to the rocker arm pad. Unfortunately, there's nothing in the manual that tells you how to do this. I also could not find a specification for this in the FSM either

Does anyone know how to check this?

It makes sense that they instruct you to do this, if the valve seats are re-surfaced then the valve will move 'up' towards the rocker. Here is the snippet from the FSM

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ihc1470 · 2026-06-08T00:56:00-0400

I think what they were trying to tell you is to make sure the push rod is not bottomed in the lifter. You would not want to be so tight as to hold the valve open.

8769bigred · 2026-06-08T22:02:50-0400

@ihc1470 that makes sense. That would be a bad situation. I find it interesting there’s no way to check such a thing before assembly. I guess you could check the valve recession in the head against the spec. That would give you an idea of valve depth but not much of an idea on how much you would need to trim off the stem

I do see a spec for ‘no more than .010 thousands can be removed from stem’

I would think that if you just skim the seat and the valve face it should not effect the ‘lash’ between the rocker and stem all that much

ihc1470 · 2026-06-08T22:46:15-0400

Also if you reface the rocker arm where it contacts the valve stem you will gain just a bit of clearance too. If you have not started anything on the valve job yet mearsure the stem height and you will have a reference point to work with going back together. Another thing that can change all that is if you resurface the heads to get them flat.

8769bigred · 2026-06-09T00:02:26-0400

Good call on measuring the valves before I send them to a shop. Luckily I do not need to resurface the head so I should not have too many problems with the valve protrusion / recession

How to measure valve stem to rocker arm pad clearance?

8769bigred

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ihc1470

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8769bigred

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ihc1470

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8769bigred

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