A little over a year ago I replaced the head gaskets on my '01 Discovery and noticed that the rockers and shafts were quite worn with around 110k miles on them. I wasn't worried about a failure, but the truck had that "diesel" sound coming from the top end that seems to be very prevalent in the D2 and I decided I wanted to finally resolve it. I ordered the Britpart full assembly which includes aluminum rockers, shafts, and springs.

The first thing I noticed was that the rocker shafts do not have an alignment mark like the factory shafts, which is disappointing but not a showstopper. I installed the parts, let it idle up to operating temp, and everything sounded good. This only lasted for around 100mi, at which point I heard a loud chirping noise coming from the motor after getting off the highway. I immediately parked it, towed it home, diagnosed the origin of the noise, and tore the motor down again to inspect the new rockers.


the first issue was this cracked rocker arm. I'm fairly confident that it was shipped like this and I installed it without noticing. Which is a little embarrassing on my part.


The next thing I saw was that every arm has one of these casting protrusions on the inner bore that was already leaving wear marks on the shaft.


it's tough to see in this photo, but the chirping noise was most likely coming from this cup, which is scored. This wear was confusing, because only a few rocker arms showed it and the rest looked normal.

I don't know exactly why, but these Britpart rocker assemblies seem to oil very poorly. I tested them vs the oem rockers by cranking the motor with the pushrods removed, and noticed that the Britpart assemblies only discharge oil out the post side, with almost no oil coming out the spring side of the arm.

I warrantied them out with LRDirect, who was great to deal with, and replaced them with (supposedly) OEM one-piece steel arms from Allmakes. These seem to be a much better product and the rover is finally running knock-free. This is mostly just a PSA that might save someone the trouble of removing and reinstalling their rocker arms 4 times like I did through this process.

 

This has given me pause for though. When I did the top overhaul on my engine, I used the Britpart rocker assemblies. At first, the incessant tick/tap was gone, and about 200 miles later, it gradually returned. Oy.

Rhys L.