454 w/ bent pushrods?

Hi well you are meant to be the best i hope i never have anything dealt with by such a novice.

Not sure which one it is but the later models that you just torque down also used Mexican lifters that tended to stick wide open after they were re-used. Also, if you crank down the rockers too fast you can jam the valves into the piston if it happens to be at tdc and the lifters didn't bleed fast enough. Lastly, it's a marine app, lots of wet air. If it sat maybe the lifters stuck in their bores and didn't move when the valve springs told them to. Remember, they have to keep the lifters on the cam even though they're called valve springs.

Push rods bend when the valves smack a piston. Valve float is rare on an engine such as this unless it's a drag boat, there simply isn't enough lift in the cam shaft imo (and I say this without knowing the cam spec, obviously).

If there is an incorrect head gasket, then somebody probably disassembled the engine to rebuild it, decked the heads (perhaps they were warped), and didn't shim it or check combustion chamber valve clearance. This would also put a lot of stress on the push rods if they weren't the proper length from having the head decked and simply reinstalled. I'd bet dollars to donuts this is a rebuild a guy did in his garage over the winter.

Col. Jeff Cooper said the following about shooting handguns: "Shooting a pistol is simple, it just ain't easy."

The same applies to rebuilding engines.

It sounds more like you had valve float and the springs bound. Happens on drag cars if you over rev them, or miss a shift.