JustNO

You broke lifters and cost you another engine?

MEAN LT1

I hate hearing stuff like this. Just when Im excited about go SR here comes stuff liek this.

Denny Please explain what happened.

speed_demon24

Solid roller does not mean less reliability. Changes are you had cheap or defective lifters that weren't up to the job. Solid roller just requires more maitinence, but it has more potential for power. Your setup could have been mismatched too, or not had the heads/intake to support that huge cam.

JustNO

Exactly!!!
It shouldn't be that easy!

rskrause

Lifter breakage is not uncommon in an engine with an aggressive cam. We just found a cracked one last week in my buddies 5.0 stroker race motor on a routine teardown. Easily could have cost the whole motor if it let go. When people talk about some of this technology not being suitable for typical street use, they are NOT kidding.

A little elaboration: street use can be harder on parts than race use. Even a mild drag race engine will get pulled apart and inspected/freshened up after say 100 runs. That's about 15-<20 minutes (for a 10 second car) of high rpm/wide open throttle (passes plus burnout) and maybe another couple of hours total run time which is under very easy conditions (driving around the pits, return road, etc.). You could easily equal the high load/rpm portion in a year of driving with hundreds of times the amount of less demanding use. And on the street, a motor is more likely to be abused - operating under high load when too cold, too hot, in the wrong gear, etc.

This is one reason why I stick to ~0.600" valve lift for a street small block motor. The bigger lobes are quite aggressive, require big spring pressures, etc. and the whole thing is just not going to stand up to street use. And then people will try to cheap out on springs. There are some newer springs that are going to be more likely to live for the number of cycles a street machine sees, but they are quite expensive. In the $400 range. And a set of top quality roller lifters is going to be in the $1,000 range. And so on. And even these parts are simply not designed for street use. Though they may have a bit more margin than the usual sportsman race parts.

Rich

ABA383

Bigger is not always better...especially for a street car/DD even if it is a SR cam...Just be careful...and hope you only have to drive 1 mile to work, and have real understanding neighbors, and don't have to be at work until noonish..

...and I was stressing over a change from my 22X/23X to a 23X/24X...

--Alan

1racerdude

Get Isky "Red Zone" or Crower "HIPPO" lifters and don't let it idle a bunch. That's why I got Schebeck lifters for $1000 dollars.

Fastbird93

My sentiments exactly. That sure as heck ain't no street friendly bumpstick, that's for sure.

MEAN LT1

Wow, I didnt know there was such a thing as $1000
lifters. Are they lined with gold?.

1racerdude

Just silver.
Jesel's are $2500.00.

rskrause

And the people who use them don't spend the money for nothing. Though the Crower severe duty is only ~$600. That's what I use. The lifter that broke on my buddys 5.0 was an ISKY, which runs $600+ as well. We are debating what to upgrade to. We may just go with another set of ISKY's and do a more rigorous maintainence program. Something like a 25 run inspection cycle. This illustrates why very aggressive valve trains are not suited for street use, in case you haven't figured that out yet.

We don't know the lobe profile on the cam under discussion, but I suspect it would need very good supporting parts to have much longevity.

Rich

JustNO

For which setups are you talking about? I tought the Morels are the best and most expensive.

1racerdude

Mech roller.
OH no Morel isn't the most expensive. Look around and ya will see.

Get a cam ground with "soft" ramps and ya will be ok with the Crower or Isky rollers.
Call Crower and talk to Dave He will get ya fixed up with the size and profile ya need to do it right.

JustNO

Oh Mech roller thats ok.
Then Morel is the most expensive for hydraulic setups
true?

MEAN LT1

Slowly but surely i feel my SR dreams going out the window. From what it sounds like is that a decent solid roler valvetrain is going to cost in the neighborhood of $1500-$2000. And thats just the parts that are known to fail ie: lifters and springs and lets not forget the shaft mounts. Maybee I'll just put the 2 grand into some 18 degree heads instead and run a HR instead.[sigh]