I removed the rocker assembly from my 22RE today in an effort to replace what I thought was a defective rocker arm. As it turns out, all of the rockers are showing various degrees of distress. The shoes which ride on the cam are all showing heavy wear despite the fact that the engine only has 90 miles on it. The cam lobes are heavily worn as well to the point that the cam is no longer servicable.

My first guess is that this is the result of a severe lubrication failure. But I have good oil pressure and there is plenty of oil pooled on top of the head. This leads me to believe that the rocker shafts themselves are not getting oil for some reason.

The history of the engine is that it got a full rebuild including a new cylinder head, oil pump, rocker shaft, rockers, cam, and ARP head studs. The lobes were greased with the grease that came with the cam and GM's EOS was added to the oil as specified by the cam installation instructions. The cam was broken in per the instructions as well.

What looks like might be the problem is the clearance between the ARP head studs and bolt holes in the proline cylinder head. It looks like the 22RE passes oil along the side of the head bolts into the pillow blocks that support the rocker shafts. The ARP bolts fit rather slugly in these holes which leads me to believe that the studs are preventing the rocker assembly from getting full lubrication.

I know that ARP studs and the proline heads are a fairly common upgrade to the 22RE which is why I'm confused about why this happened. Any thoughts?

 

I have had a similar camshaft failure and can tell you the camshaft was not hardened properly. I started having to readjust rockers very quickly and continued to chase the problem until it was obvious all lobes were wearing out. Plenty of oil, all new head and valve train parts. Cheap E-BAY parts.. never again.... the cyl head I bought on E-Bay lost a guide and so I dropped a valve to finalize the great E-BAY part experience. DON'T DO IT!!! pay for good parts!!! that's all I got to say about that!!!

 

I believe the problem was two-fold in my case. First, the rocker arms were aftermarket replacements which apparently have a history of problems. Secondly, there were some suspicions over the hardness of the camshaft (the camshaft came from Erson).

I replaced the rockers with genuine toyota and used an LCE camshaft. No problems since.

 

I know you posted this awhile back, but I am about to replace my rocker assembly, and am trying to research my options. I am going for a pair of refurbished OEM rocker arms. When you replaced the rockers, did you use your existing rocker shafts? or did you bump up to the LCE higher oil capacity shafts?