The advertised lift of a cam is at the valves right? So that would include the 1.5 rocker multiplication? so a 525 lift cam would achually put out 595 lift with 1.6 rockers?

 

No those numbers are at the lobe.
Not every engine has rocker arms with the same ratio.
and if you take the distortion of the valvetrain geometry into account then those numbers could vary way too much.

 

Yes, cam spec lift is given at the valve. However your arithmetic is a bit optimistic: .525" divided by 1.5 gives .350" lobe lift, which will give .560" at the valve with 1.6 ratio rockers.

 

 

This is too much math for me I barely passed geometry in high school

 

RB83L69 is correct. Usually the cam manufacturer used the stock ratio for computing the valve lift.
If you want to find the lift of a cam with a non-stock rocker arm ratio, you first divide by the stock ratio (to find the lobe lift), then multiply by the non-stock rocker arm ratio. 2 easy steps.

 

are you serious?
Most factory rocker arms don't even have even or exact rocker arm ratios, like on my friends 390 ford shortblock I built for him last summer it was supposed to be 1.48 rockers but they measured out to a 1.41 ratio except for two or them.
and beside do all small block Gen1 engine have 1.5 rocker arms.
Dammn those cam people.

 

LOL!

Well you almost topped my lousy subtraction of peanut cam lift and 'better' cam lift... almost. I think from now on I had better use a calculator rather than my head for simple math

Almost all cam manufacturers list the valve lift with some 'standard' rocker arm ratio like for Chevy cams they use 1.5 as the ratio. It is easier really, most of the time you know what valve lift you want but not what lobe lift. I'd have to take a number and divide it by 1.5 (or 1.6) and then I could tell you what lobe lift I'd be looking for.

RB is right about the number.