[68WarDog]

Guess I've been lucky with 15 years of an aggressive street solid roller, BUT yearly maintenance of checking lash (.022 cold/ .026 hot) UD R81/R88 .3883 lobes. 254/262#.050, .582 with 1.52 HS. Crower solid roller lifters with added high oil pressure feeding hole to needle bearings. Comp 943 pacaloy roller spring seat pressure 240. Springs routinely changed out every 4/5 years, when previously running 1.65 HS.. I've always considered the trade off of running a heavy hydraulic roller versus the lighter solid roller. My guess has been if turning 6k the weight of those hydraulic roller has got to be into consideration, And if I ever decide to run a hydraulic roller I'm wanting at least 155-165 seat pressure. Butler Mega brace.

[tom s]

Remember!When you put solid rollers in a hyd roller cam it becomes a solid roller cam!You tight lash them at 6 thou and put 200lb on the seats.Ran them for years,had a needle bearing failure that I caught before it spit them out.The lifter body just kissed the lobe but saved it.Had the Isky lifters rebuilt and ran for a couple years before I put the sissy lifters on the cam.The solids will also make the cam smaller by about 8 degrees and the loss of lift at the valve depending on rocker ratio.No free lunch.No cam maker recommend it just say it can be done.They say just get a tight lash solid roller cam where the ramp is designed for solids.Carry on!Tom

[Gach]

Just go with a good street solid roller and be done with it.

[Gach]

64 Speed, what’s it going come down to is how handy are you in adjusting your own valve lash.

[Joe's Garage]

Since you've already sacrificed one block, spend the $$ and get one of those 'Big Braces' that were posted about in this thread:
https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...d.php?t=836832

Get THAT installed in your new block and you will absolutely NEVER blow the lifter bores off. EVER.

With the amount of money you have invested in your car, this will be just another drop-in-the-bucket. 'The cost of doing business'. Cheap insurance.

And definitely get the rev-limiting setup installed, too.

Good luck!

[Dragncar]

The BAM solid roller lifters with the DLC option actually are the same bodies as the old Crane Ultra-Pro lifter. A VERY high quality roller lifter. I just verified it with the guy I bought them from.
A whole step above any needle bearing solid roller short of a Jessel which are the gold standard.
If big boy 1000+ HP engines can not hurt the BAM DLC lifter after 2-3 seasons without lash changine no street engine is going to hurt them.
Most, well all of them except the BAM DLC lifter run a bronze bushing which is relatively soft, can break under high spring pressure and does wear changing lash requiring more maintenance.
I mean, twin turbo 7 second street Pontiacs run them so you think any street "old faithful" cam is going to hurt them ? Never, unless the builder did something wrong.

[tom s]

I run 150 on the seats with my hyd roller cams and have made HP to 6800 in one of my V engines.Many guys are turning 7000 in BBCs with them and the lifters are pretty much the same.FWIW,Tom

[64speed]

Guys I appreciate the support. 5 or so months and I’ll be back on the road. In the meantime I have plenty to do to keep me busy

[tom s]

Lou,John Callie’s make Morel lifters and say ALL are made in the USA.Comps are made in SoCal by Ron Shaver.Johnson’s are made in Michigan.Morel does make a lot of other companies lifters.If any branded hyd roller lifters are made in China I have not been able to confirm it in at least 3 years of searching.Tom

[Dragncar]

Paul is still around, doing fine and still doing his thing. Building great engines.

[Gach]

Originally Posted by Gach

The hydraulic roller lifter craze goes back 20 years, over the 20 years it’s like 4-1 with those who’s had issues with hydraulic roller lifters. Many are sauce though China. The Lunati lifters are actually Morel made in China. The new craze is bushed lifter, which are cheaper to produce then needle bearing lifters.

Tom..I stand corrected . Lunati lifters , are actually made by Morel the material is sauce from China. one of the issues with Lunati lifters is the tie bar that holds them together breaks off. Went though who Ordeal with my Brother. It’s like some of the meat in the big chain stores, If the American company adds fat to the beef, they can say made in America even though the meat actually came from China or Brazil.

[Gach]

Dragncar: I bracket raced, 2 classes for over 10 years before retiring my roller cam 455 with Comp lifters. .

.

Wow 10 years 2 classes. Where those Comp Cam lifters bushed lifters ?

[slowbird]

My moral lifters, definitely junk and people need to stay away!

[grivera]

Excellent points Mike - as has been stated in the past, the BB Chevy rocker is suspect as the geometry could be jacked up and the 7K rpm helped it be known. I still don’t understand why that was used when there are off the shelf quality Pontiac rockers. I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the high RPM as cause of the carnage.

[Sirrotica]

FWIW, back in 1970 I was working at a Pontiac dealership in my final quarter of my senior year on COOP. There was a RA IV block that had been changed under warranty sitting in the warranty parts pile that also had one broken lifter bore same as the OPs block. Now that was with a .520 lift at the valve camshaft with 1.65 rockers. and of course a hydraulic flat tappet cam and lifter.

It's always been a weak point in Pontiacs engine design, accentuated by quick ramps, and high lift cams. I've run my share of both solid, and hydraulic, flat tappet, and solid roller cams, without any lifter braces, and been lucky that I never had a lifter bore break. But as I said, saw a bone stock RA IV break out the bore.

Being both bores broke with the same pair of lifters, my guess was they turned sideways because of link bar failures. 2 bores breaking on the same pair of lifters is too much of a coincidence. That coincidentally is the first time I have seen 2 adjacent bores fail in a Pontiac at the same time.

Assessing blame is going to be tough sledding, No one is going to step up and take all the blame, and liability that goes with it, too much money is involved.

In this type of situation there is plenty of blame to go around, but everyone has pulled their shoulders in as close as they can.......

The primary reason so many high performance engine shops get reputations is they don't get rich doing the work, and there is a ton of liability involved.

Example: a 410 sprint car engine can easily be $50,000, they do fail, and when they do there is likely not much salvageable. It's a cost of running a 410 cubic inch engine on methanol to the ragged edge, best parts, best builders but nearly 2.5 HP per inch, and they do go south. No bitching about what failed, they get a new one, and go on.

On someone's own car that they invested their own money into, they can't finance engine after engine out of their own pocket, so they want someone to stand behind the parts, and labor, there isn't enough money being made to warranty a piece that you know is going to get thrashed, and you have no control over it after it leaves your shop.

On another example of another RA IV. I set the tune up on it, the car was sold to a new owner, and he had someone work on it from a Fiske auto store, affiliated with K Mart. The guy thought that he heard a lifter tick, turns out it was a header leak. That didn't stop the inexperienced fool from tightening the intake valve down, over, and over, until he ran the valve into the piston, breaking the valve head off and punching a hole through the piston. It scored the cylinder too. Oh yeah, I got a call because I set the engine up, but I had no fault in the demise of that engine whatsoever. I probably got $75 to set that engine up after they got it fired up, but I could have been in line for the whole boat without some good detective work. The reason many shy away from high performance engine work.

If you never heard of Ron Hutter, he lives up in the northern part of Ohio (Chardon), and has been a premier engine builder for many Busch cars and drag cars, as well as late model stock cars. Has his own engine dyno, flow bench, been doing it for decades, very good reputation. A friend of mine bought a high dollar SBC for his late model stock car, put the engine in, and his crew forgot to put water in the engine. You can surmise what happened. The guy wants Ron Hutter to repair the engine ASAP, as it's during the race season.

Ron Hitter tells him that he won't do any more work for him, period. The guy says why is that? Hutter tells him you made me look bad in front of a lot of my customers, and I can't afford a bad reputation.

If the car runs good, and for a long time, you're a hero, if it ends up in a pile of broken parts you're a zero. Lots of times it was out of my control, and months later, never stops someone from pointing a finger at you.

[64speed]

Across from each other. You gotta remember my car is LOUD. After the rev disaster I did not immediately hear anything so I coasted the roughly 500 yards to my house all the while those lifters beating the hell out of their bores. I thought I was fine because I had good oil pressure….for a little bit.

[Gach]

My opinion lifter failure, most likely took out weak lifter bores. Them baby’s were trying to turn which put a tremendous amount of pressure on lifter bores.

[Gach]

Tom if I remember right a while back he mention having a couple of noisy lifters.

[Gach]

Tom, there’s a chit load of hydraulic roller lifters that have lost wheels. There’s been two other pictures posted of different failures.

[tom s]

I have never read about lifters loosing a wheel let alone more than one with so few of miles.JMHO,my engine would not be going back to that builder.Tom