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Originally Posted by 74Grandville
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Agree. Rhoads knows the best way to set lash on their product, and that will have the best chance of the valve train surviving.
The fit and finish of the Rhoads lifters are way above what I have seen from other companies, and I believe they have the best chance of living. A lobe will take out a lifter and vice versa, and when both are ground down it can only be speculation of whether the lobe or lifter failed first.
While you have identified two that failed, I would be willing to bet that additional lobe/lifter combinations are in various degrees of failure -- and it could be these that might tell you where the failure points are. If some of the lifters look like new but you are seeing slight flattening of the lobe crown, I'd say that the cam is taking out the lifters.
We have Rhoads V-Max lifters along with the Crower RAIV reproduction in the 2+2 and it has lasted thousands of miles. Before that combination we had two cam/lifter failures in that engine and mostly out of desperation we went with the two products that seemed to have the least reported problems.
Just for the record, I haven't pulled out a HFT cam on an engine rebuild that I would be comfortable putting back in the engine. That's 100% of the HFT cams in a row that had either gone flat or showed initial signs of failure.
I just had the first HR cam failure come in and it was due to a rivet coming out of a link bar. Haven't heard of any other link bars failing so mostly just bad luck, but flat tappet cams going flat happens all the time.