[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Formulas

One thing that caught my mind is

Doesn't the LSX engines operate with less spring pressure's than race Pontiacs?

They operate with less spring pressure than a "street" Pontiac in stock form!!

For starters, The very low mile LS engines I've done camshaft swaps in have stock beehive springs in them that were lucky to check just over 90 lbs. seat pressure, which is why those rollers live a long happy life. You can't even successfully run a decent flat tappet camshaft in a Pontiac with those springs pressures. So we don't even have to talk about race engines here.

When upgrading the camshafts in them years back, we went straight for a double spring with about 130 lbs. on the seat. The valvetrain in the LS engines are much lighter than Pontiacs, so they work well with a little less spring pressures on aftermarket camshafts than what you would typically see today, especially in engines with heavier valvetrains. I've run those engines like that for another 80,000 miles with the original lifters still in place without a problem, and spin them near 7000 rpm.
In a Pontiac with a pretty heavy valve train you are looking at 150 lbs. on the seat and somewhere around 360-380 open on a fairly mild hydraulic roller to control the valvetrain, even at lower 5-6000 rpm levels. I've had no issues with this either. My BBC has been together for the last 20 years with those springs without failure.