Pushrod length

[Craig 94 TA GT]

After 7 months of rebuilding, the engine shop finally had my 355 ready a few days ago. Now the issue: I have milled heads, a decked block (not sure how many thousandths), longer valves (5.010 intake & 4.995 exh), and a 1074 gasket, which is 0.039. The engine builder kept insisting that my current chromemoly 7.2 pushrods are fine, so he re-used them. However, Advanced Induction is shocked to hear them using a stock length pushrod. So I took a rocker off myself and see the contact pattern on the valve stem (attached picture). It looks a bit long to me...does this look bad? I think it should move at least 1/32" up. Doing rough math, I think that would mean a 7.15 pushrod. I'm not sure if it's ok to continue breaking the motor in with these pushrods, or if this will be really bad for my valve guides.

I'm probably going to buy a length checking tool if this looks bad enough to cause premature wear. I already have a paid-for set of pushrods from Advanced Induction - I'd just need to specify the length.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Injuneer]

The important thing is not the length of the wear pattern. The important thing is that the wear pattern is centered on the valve stem, indicating that at mid-point, the tip of the roller is exactly in the center of the stem. I can't tell anything from the photo.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

Sorry, it's a bit blurry. The contact point is approx 2/3rds towards the exhaust side. If it were centered on the tip, the whole contact point would need to be shifted up about 1/32". I attached another photo with the contact point ends colored in yellow, and the center of the valve stem colored in red. I hope it'll look better, but the jpg compression has seemed to make it a bit blurry again.
Since it isn't centered at midpoint, do you think it will hurt the valve train if I drive it until I get new pushrods? Thanks....

[MunsonGTA]

i would think you'd need a shorter pushrod from the milling and the decked block.

wouldn't the longer valve push the rocker farther away from the lifter causing a need for a longer pushrod though?

i'd try to find somebody local that you can borrow a pushrod length checker from.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

Regarding the longer valve pushing the rocker arm back more, I thought that too initially. But now I'm thinking, since the rocker arm is on a pivot point, the raised valve will simply cause the rocker to move back down on a 0.625 ratio (or 1/1.6) on the pushrod end - since it's the inverse of the 1.6 ratio. So then it would require an even shorter pushrod? But needless to say, I'm going to get a proform checker from summit because local shops don't seem to carry them. I hope that driving the car around for a week or so, although babying it, won't hurt anything.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

After measuring, I found out I neeed 7.1 pushrods. Actually 7.13 was the needed measurement, but AI had recommended getting slightly shorter than longer. Hopefully they'll be really close.

The worst part is, AI said that this is very common and engine builders often get this part wrong, because they think it's "close enough." Many people end up doing it themselves after the builder is done with it.