[Cliff R]

The end user here needs to realize that when you "upgrade" to roller rocker arms they may not really me much of an upgrade.

First you add a LOT more places to wear out. Needle bearings for one if you go to full rollers, and a hardened pin with a hardened roller on it.

Not to mention that they can fatigue where the pins go thru and the pins can "walk" out of them. I've seen that happen WAY too many times for my liking.

You also add a lot of weight. Weight in the valve train is NEVFR a good thing are REQUIRES additional spring pressure to keep things in check at high RPM's. In the 45 plus years I've been doing these engines I still have yet to see a failed factory stamped steel rocker arm in a Pontiac or Chevy build. I have seen several Mopar 383's and 440's have the pushrod poke a hole thru them, but to date never a single failure with a Pontiac rocker arm. I even ran stamped steel rockers in my 1965 Chevy Nova SS's SBC engine spinning it to 7000rpms shift points and thru the traps at 7500rpms. I raced it for years like that and no issues with rocker arms even with the pretty hefty spring pressures I was running....FWIW

We are also trusting these offshore manufacturers to get the hardness of the pins on par with the hardness of the rollers. That is where the the PRW stainless steel full rollers fail miserably. They told me they knew about the issue and corrected it around 2009-2010. Even so how do we know as a consumer that it really happened, or that they did cycle testing on them to find out if the upgraded pins/rollers made the grade in long term service. Personally I highly doubt if they did anything based on the high failure rate with those parts.

The worst part here as I mentioned is that if you have hydraulic lifters the plunger travel takes up the wear and they don't get noisey until worn slam out. At that point they have put a BUTT-LOAD of metal into your engine.........