Rocker arm shaft bolts???
 

Hey there, new to mopar forums and hoping that someone will be able to help me out. I have a 70 Dodge Dart Swinger with a stock 318 in it, 67000 original miles. I recently took the heads off to have a valve job done in order to have hardened seats installed. I didn't replace the lifters, rods, or rockers cause they are still all in good shape (or so I thought). When I got the heads back I reinstalled everything as it once was (have photos to verify). Now I got a loud chattering sound coming from both heads. This sound intensifies as the engine is under load, and is noticeable during idle.
Could this be a stuck lifter or are the rocker arm shafts too tight or not tight enough. My service manual states that rocker arm shafts should be tightened to 15 ft/lbs, but after looking online to verify this I have noticed a couple of different torque specs ranging from 15-30 ft/lbs.
I have checked for an exhaust leak and there is none. I hope someone could shed some light on this problem for me. This chattering makes the car sound like I got a diesel engine under the hood. Thanks.

sounds like a lifter problem to me, hard to tell not hearing it, if the bolts are down tight atleast 20 lbs the should be fine,

Thanks for getting back to me. The lifters looked cool to me but maybe I missed something. I think I'll just pick up a new set to make sure. I did take it out for a drive yesterday, and noticed that the chattering sound gets louder as the revs increase. Could I have missed an exhaust leak somewhere. The sound is present during idle, but gets really loud during acceleration. There is a sweet spot that I noticed the chattering disappear, the sound stops at around 1500-2000 rpm just coasting.

This may be a "reach", but if he put in new valve seats, and didnt measure properly, the "installed" height of the valves would have been changed. That WOULD throw-off things in a shaft mount set up. I dont know what the proper installed-height is. I think its 1.650". I've also seen a spec of 1-5/8 to 1-11/16". A longer measurement would possibly cause binding in the valve train, a shorter one might cause excessive play. Since that is the only thing that changed, I'd start there. Unless you also used some funky, thick as hell head gasket!

i thought that too, then i thought naw, but you never know, some shops dont really care,

could be a leak. could be something else, somtime leaks are hard to find, unless you richen up your mixture on the carb,

Thanks guys this thing is driving me nuts. I did notice today before I went to work that I installed the exhaust manifold gaskets upside down (kinda dumb) . So that's what I'm going to correct first. I'll check the valve heights too. I just installed standard felpro head gaskets, nothing special. Someone also told me that the valves could have been installed unevenly which would cause a tapping. I checked it out yesterday with a straight edge and feeler gauge, and some of them were sitting a little lower than others (like about .008-.010). I called the machine shop and the guy said that there will be slight differences. Is this correct, should some be lower that others?

Could you have put the rocker shafts on upside down? im not sure if that would make your loud tapping noise but maybe