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OK this crap is driving me nuts. My rocker arms are hitting the intake side of the valve covers and I don't know why. The first time I had cheap stamped steel covers on and wrote it off as just that, cheap covers. Now high dollar billet covers and they still hit. I've pulled new rockers off the shelf at the parts store and they match. Mesured out perfect. The only other thing I can think of is the heads don't match the block. The block numbers come out to a '78 SBC 350 now the only numbers I can find on the heads are 333882. Can somebody ID these for me. I'm thinking they might be 400's or 305's or something thats throwing off the rockers.

Thanks

They make tall covers to eliminate that problem. You got them?

The head you have is a 74-80 head that was common on a 350/400 engine. has 76cc chamber with 2.02/1.60 valves.

Thanks gazim.
The rockers are not hitting the top of the covers they hit on the side towards the intake thats whats got me stumped

You got me David. You arn't trying to use the new cover with the bolts in the center of the covers are you??

If they're hitting the sides of the valve cover, the cover is on upside down. Turn them around and see how they fit!
Jerry

Well I figured it out finally!!!! Even after I took one of the rockers off, took it to the parts house and checked it with calipers against a new stock rocker and it checked perfect. I got fed up and got a whole new set of rockers, pivots and nuts. And behold no more hitting and it even runs better. The only thing I can figure it is the PO had put locks on the studs and for some reason it effected the way the pivots moved or something because the locks were NOT hitting the top, only the rockers scraped the side of the covers toward the intake.
Either way it's fixed now, thanks

I've encountered that problem with engines that have had the rocker arms replaced with 1.6:1 ratio rockers, rather than the stock 1.5:1 ratio ones. It's necessary to relocate the rocker studs about 1/16" further away from the valve stems, and do some pretty sophisticated modifications to pushrod length and rocker geometry to make the 1.6 rockers work right. On anything other than an all-out race engine, the performance gain is not worth the effort.
Jerry