help with valve guide breaking

[1992hatch]

ok sence none of my "friends" seem like they want to help ill ask you guysok i bought an sr20 off someone and was told that it was good and the guy i bought it from was an upstanding guy anyway i had problems from the start after i installed it it was down on power and when i ran the a/c it would get hot and if i ran it on the freeway it would heat up but when i drove it on surface streets it would stay at 180F so i check the timing and it was at 5 btdc so i set it right at 15btdc and it would over heat and a friend of mine did a block test on it and it showed some exhust gases in the coolant so bad head gasket i took the head off and sent it out to get checked and resurfaced and i noticed the there was spots on the head and block that the gasket never touch and never sealed so i got it put back together and started it up and i heard a clicking noise it sounded like lifter tap i figured that they would pump up and be finewell on my test drive the car started running bad and smoking i limped it home and call a guy that knows alot about these engines he told me to pull the valve couver and see if a rocker arm had fallen off and two of them had #3 and 4 intake and broke the guides so i got some more guides and put everything back the way it should bei started it up and it ran for like a minute then it threw #3 rocker arm i asked dude what would have caused it he asked me if i had bled the lifters i said no and he told me how to do it i get that done and desided to turn the motor over so i could watch the rockers to see if i could see any thing that looked not right after about 15-20 turns of the engine it broke the #3 guide againi stopped there and started calling people and couldn't get anyone then jumped on here does anyone know what could be causing it to do this please i really need help with thissorry for the long post just thought i would give full history of the enginethank you in advance

[912.0turbo]

Your post is a little unclear. Is your valve guide breaking or your rocker arm? It sounds like your rocker arm. When you took off the head you didnt have any bent valves? When mine broke I bent all my intake valves and two exhaust valves. Sounds like your pistons and valves may be making contact and breaking your rocker arms. Hope that helps.

[240life]

as far as breaking the guides and causing your rockers to fall off it almost sounds like your shims and guides are in the wrong position

[1992hatch]

as far as breaking the guides and causing your rockers to fall off it almost sounds like your shims and guides are in the wrong position

what do you mean like i have them on the wrong valve and if so what is the right wayon that cylender the guide is on the front valve and the shime is on the back one

[1992hatch]

ok i went today and talked to the guy that sold me the engine and before i could get the hole story out he asked me if i had kept the giudes and shims in order and of corse i hadn't so he told me that i had to use a tool to mesure each one and make sure that the rocker arms level he told me that it takes about 20mins for each one i have 8 sets to do at 20mins a pop this is going to take all day lolbut he did let me borrow his tool to mesure it so that was very cool i knew that something was out of spec i just didn't know what it was so now im out to work on the car again ughbut it should be running after this

[240life]

what do you mean like i have them on the wrong valve and if so what is the right wayon that cylender the guide is on the front valve and the shime is on the back one

what I mean is that you have 1 shim and one guide per rocker they only go together one way. If you install the shim in the guide spot the guide will crack and cause the rocker to pop off