[Gach]

On the restrictors thats up to you. I’ve always run them.

[Gach]

What the Chevy boy dose, runs them for 5000 miles. Puts new ones in, sends old one back to be rebuilt. Been game changer for him.

[tom s]

I run them in a race car but not on the street.1800 in high gear on the highway don’t think enough gets up there.Just me

[Cliff R]

I've known quite a few guys to run solid rollers on the street with those spring pressures and be OK for a while. Even so every once in a while you are going to see a failure if it's something you are putting a lot of time on.

Common sense applies here. Stock roller cam set-ups use much lighter parts, and very little spring pressure and go a couple hundred thousand miles without issue. Coming in with over 500 pounds open pressure is like having 16 big fat guys standing on your pushrods. It's a ticking time bomb no matter how good the parts are in the food chain.

Might be a good idea to lift the intake on occassion and swap out the lifters if you continue to run that set-up........

[steve25]

Just like the OEMs these days if your motor does not need to buzz over 6500 and your not also running over .550”, then to me your doing something wrong if your eating up a hydro roller lifter.

Everything has its limits, and valvetrain parts wise some folks are better at finding that limit!

[Formulajones]

I'm in the other camp, much like Tom. I like solid rollers for race cars and don't use them on the street anymore.

For me, a real street car, I put 10,000+ miles a year on them, they aren't garage queens. Maybe for you guys that only drive 1000 or maybe 2000 miles a year it's no big deal but to me that's not a street car, that's just a toy. In that case a solid roller could be a viable option, you just have to accept and be prepared that you'll be changing lifters, and possibly a cam at some point in the future. They just don't seem to like a bunch of mileage. For you seldom driven guys you could stretch that out a few years. For me I'd be replacing them every 6 months, that's not practical at all.

I have zero issues with hydraulic rollers, with street cars here that have been together for 25+ years and never a valve cover off. But I typically get away with about 150-160 lbs. on the seats, and about 400 lbs. open and they go 10's of thousands of miles.

Sure, a solid roller will make a little more power but in a street car it's not worth the squeeze for me.

Bam makes a nice lifter Singleton, and probably one I would try myself, as the pin oiled Crowers didn't work out for me, and obviously gave up on yours as well. The bushed versions are said to not be any better and in fact a bad idea on cars that sit for periods of time because they are said to have a tendency to not hold oil on those cold starts unlike a needle bearing roller, that's just the rumor and something to ponder. But I'm not convinced that other brands will last longer, it's like you said, luck of the draw. Cross your fingers and roll with it. It's the price we pay when you get into that sort of thing. Lucky for you it looks like you caught it early enough and you'll get out of this with minimal damage.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by steve25

Just like the OEMs these days if your motor does not need to buzz over 6500 and your not also running over .550”, then to me your doing something wrong if your eating up a hydro roller lifter.

Everything has its limits, and valvetrain parts wise some folks are better at finding that limit!

Exactly, you can make all the power you need on the street with a hydraulic roller and not have to spin it beyond 6500 to do it with the right combo of parts.

I however do run hydraulic rollers in the .650" range and they have lasted 25+ years. I think it's even more critical to make sure you have valve train control and stability, with a nice lobe profile and the right spring pressures, and buy a good quality hydraulic roller and quit going for the cheapy stuff. That's where a lot of people get bit.

[Skip Fix]

"Stock roller cam set-ups use much lighter parts, and very little spring pressure and go a couple hundred thousand miles without issue."

I checked the springs on some of the GM Hiperf SBC Fast Burns and seat was right at 100lbs! These were the duals on the earlier version later versions used LS1 beehives.

[PAUL K]

When using mechanical valvetrain, routine checking of valve lash will catch most failures of parts before they become a big issue.

[Formulajones]

Yup, the LS stuff I worked on in the 90's and 2000's would typically have around 90-100 lbs. of seat pressure on engines with 50-60,000 miles on them, yet would spin 6000 rpm easily. You can get away with that using beehives, really light retainers, small valves, some of them lightweight hollow stem sodium filled stuff, and camshaft lobes that are pretty lazy. Wouldn't work so well on a Pontiac with much heavier moving parts.

[Singleton]

Originally Posted by PAUL K

When using mechanical valvetrain, routine checking of valve lash will catch most failures of parts before they become a big issue.

I don’t disagree. However, in my case, I check lash at least annually for the last six years, and had just checked about 1500 miles ago. Lash had never changed, so whatever went wrong happened pretty quickly. From now on I’m going to continue to monitor lash as usual, and just plan on changing the lifters after 7500 miles or so and have them rebuilt

[Half-Inch Stud]

Attempting to sum "it" ( cam-follower technology ) up here:

Flat HYD excellent on Street & Strip for 1.5:1 on exhaust with cams making good vacuum. High Spring Pressure, Fast ramps, 1.65:1s going to impact Reliability. Even the OMG-6 could run to 7500 RPM with NON-ROTATING followers, and the results were....high maintenance, or Emotional Damage.

Roller cams excellent on Street, Strip to a point of keeping the rpm to stock redline, 0.35" lobes, and non-vasco spring pressures. All the efforts to run "Race" profiles on the Street are ....high maintenance, and Failure leading to Emotional Damage.

Solid lifters are uhm, archaic, but darn good for those that dotna mind the cold clickty sound, desire to remove the HYD feature due to uncertainty and lift loss, and desiring to....monitor or maintain lash.

The only real solutions to get enhanced Reliability are desmodromic arrangements (not here floks) or stick with modest profiles.


Some folks here are prone to... Failure, and that is effectively the most effective Emotional Damage. Why you so dumb. What the hail? Lah.
Lobe Failure; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3hoj5KuSXA

Cam profile review: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/q8Qr0aHc60E
Lifter brands reviewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/S5QrdsV63Dk

[Half-Inch Stud]

Originally Posted by Skip Fix

"Stock roller cam set-ups use much lighter parts, and very little spring pressure and go a couple hundred thousand miles without issue."

I checked the springs on some of the GM Hiperf SBC Fast Burns and seat was right at 100lbs! These were the duals on the earlier version later versions used LS1 beehives.

Yea, actually there ought to be some R&D to graft LS Beehive springs, Retainers, and Valvestem dia, valve dias?, to the PMD head to get the mass all down.

[Gach]

The SBC and LS have very light valves compared to our Pontiacs hell E-head valves are 5.200 long high ports are 6.200. Those are very heavy valves. Don’t quote on those lengths just as example. Very very heavy valve train. Couple that with long 9.300 push rods. Heavy !

The iskey reds, I’m using are far lighter, then any other Roller lifters for our Pontiac, ( actually their a SBC roller lifter ) plus my push rods are only 6.700 long. Here’s a screenshot of why . Can’t remember the name of other roller lifter in picture. The top haft or isky reds are aluminum.

Iskys on the right, top that off with titanium valves compared to those heavy steel valves you have longevity. Only thing that pocketbook killer is titanium valves. Like I said over 30 dyno pulls.

[Gach]

You put all that on the scale and you’ll be shocked at the weight difference. If you weigh a 6.200 stainless steel valve compared to a 5.200 titanium you’d be blown away.

[tom s]

Our deck is too high and our bores too small. We live with it.Tom

[slowbird]

Who cares about lifter and pushrod weight?? Valve, spring, retainer and keeper weights I definitely care about.

[Gach]

Originally Posted by tom s

Our deck is too high and our bores too small. We live with it.Tom

And we do pretty damn good too.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Gach

The SBC and LS have very light valves compared to our Pontiacs hell E-head valves are 5.200 long high ports are 6.200. Those are very heavy valves. Don’t quote on those lengths just as example. Very very heavy valve train. Couple that with long 9.300 push rods. Heavy !

.

Yep that's what I was getting at. Spring seat and open pressures are just as much related to what engine family you're working on as it is lobe profile. Pontiacs, even though physically they don't appear big on the outside, has some pretty heavy valve train parts in it. Sure seems like a lot of people forget that little detail when it comes to selecting springs.

In that 455 build thread I had a few years ago, that one came in from another shop with a very small solid flat tappet in it, and the springs were pathetically weak. If I remember right they barely had 90 lbs. seat pressure. That might work in a SBC but not a Pontiac. It was so bad that when we took it apart you could see where the retainer was dancing around on the top of the spring digging into it, and the keepers were also gouged up from the retainer bouncing up and down. Eventually that thing would have dropped a valve, and it only had a few thousand miles on it, if that.

[ponjohn]

Steve Morris FLOODS the top end with oil on high hp [4000hp] drag n drive combos. I do believe his combos are exclusively solid roller.

He even noted, that if you are going to lash the valves give the top end time to drain or you'll have oil everywhere. Just to give you an idea of the volume.