C3 4ME

Time to update your signature! Loved the videos and I too hope you get a chance to hit the 130mph mark.

ajrothm

Yeah sure. For years I had an Isky 238/248* HYD roller cam with Morel hyd roller lifters. From day one, the lifters always made a lot of noise when cold. Clackity, clackity clack...it was so bad the car would miss if you tried to drive it away at under 160*.. I tried all different types of preload, oil types/viscosity, etc etc.. Once it was warm, they were fairly quiet. I lived with it for 9 years, but when I refreshened the engine, I was ready for a change.

The engine builder suggested we go to a “low lash solid roller” setup, which in this case uses an Isky 248/258* HYD roller cam, but uses Morel solid roller lifters on it..Lashed at .008”/.010”. The setup is much quieter all of the time, much more responsive/crisp revving. Also peaks about 500 rpms higher and power holds on much better. Not a huge difference in power obviously, but more power longer, and no loss down low. Plus the solid roller valve train sounds killer. Only down side is valve lash inspections and lifter maintenance every 15k miles or so. No a big deal tho..

So far, I really like the combo. It sounds killer, runs consistent and best of all, when I start the car up at car shows, it doesn’t clatter like the rocker arms are falling off, which was really embarrassing.

ajrothm

A vid of the 10.59 pass

427Hotrod

Love that car!! Great job Allen..you had already pegged what it would run based on your experience.....it will get there.

How's it doing when racing in "Mexico"??

JIM

derekderek

10.59 and you are pissed. I was dating a size 1 girl. watched her try to squeeze into a size 0 skirt. No matter how good the numbers, the quest for better is irresistable.

ajrothm

I haven't ran anyone on the street yet, but its pretty dirty from a 30 roll....Dead hooks 1st and gets it. Honestly, it felt faster to me then what the track showed. The extra RPM range and upper range power "FELT" noticeably stronger.... It definitely has more top end pull, as indicated by its 26.5 mph back half gain when it used to gain 25 mph. All in all, I like the new combo better, I just hope I can squeeze a 130 pass out of it eventually. Maybe in December I'll try again.

69427

Thanks for the info/experience with the hydraulic roller setup. I appreciate it. I built my current engine about ten years ago, and while trying to decide which cam to put in it I noticed several BB guys here and on the Chevelle forum talking about aftermarket roller lifter reliability issues in their engines. I read enough tales of woe then to scare me away from running a hydraulic roller cam in my engine, so I defaulted to a HFT setup as I'd had good reliability and performance with that type setup in the previous engine in my car. I like the many theoretical benefits of a roller cam in an engine, but I'm just not quite convinced yet that the aftermarket can produce a troublefree hydraulic roller setup for big blocks that is equal in reliability to the small block setups. I'm admittedly not getting that last bit of potential power that a roller cam can provide, but so far, knock on wood, I've gotten ten years of troublefree track day usage out of this engine.

ajrothm

Yeah, I’d stick with what works for you. There is obvious benefits with a roller cam for sure but....even with them, the lifters are not 100% fool proof. The whole reason I had to rebuild my engine was because I had 4 Morel lifters start eating the wheels off at 24k miles, they were pitted to the point that one was squealing on the cam. Definitely had some metal
go through it all. Luckily no major damage.

I also had an LS1 with a TSP cam and using the original roller lifters on it, after 18k miles the cam lobes had noticeable pitting/wear and the oem lifters with 39k miles on them had the wheels pitted.

What I recently learned from my experience with the 496 is, hyd roller lifters are not an “install and forget about it” scenario, at least on a BBC with the heavy valvetrain parts. Had I inspected my hyd roller lifters at 15-20k miles or so, I wouldn’t have had to rebuild the engine at 24k miles.

My new regimen is I will be pulling the lifters out for inspection/replacement every 15k miles or so, I’ll also check the springs at the same time. It’s a little time/labor, but finding issues early can save you a lot of money. If I have to throw a set of $500 lifters in it every 5-6 years, then so be it.


All of this said, I still have 6 other cars with my Dad that have hyd flat tappet cams in, and only one did I have a problem with on break in so......I’m not scared of flat tappets, and I still love SFTs.

gkull

You are only the second person I have ever known that ran solid rollers on a h-roller lobe. How did you determine the lash setting? I think that your idea of solids on a h-roller is great.

ajrothm

The engine builder told me what to set the lash too. Basically as tight as we can get away with. Iron heads don't grow much so we don't need a lot of lash. The whole point of the solids on a hydraulic cam is with the milder lobes of the hyd roller, they are easier on parts, require less spring pressure, the whole valve train is more stable. With the solid rollers, they are lighter, no pump up or bleed down issues, no internal valves to worry about or make noise etc... So our point was trying to get the performance and stability of a solid roller, but the reliability/less maintenance of a hyd roller. Lastly I didnt want to do a converter or gear change so throwing a big solid roller in it was counter intuitive. I will say that the 248/258* with solids and .008/.010" lash sounds and acts bigger then the 238/248* with hyd rollers, eventhough on paper they should be about the "same size" due to lash, but they damn sure act different in some aspects.

427Hotrod

I did some dyno testing with solids on a HR in a 555'. Picked up about 10 HP across the board and of course would rev past 7000 with no issues. That one had aluminum heads. I set them at .002" cold.

JIM

Kacyc3

Does your air cleaner seal to the hood?

vegasjunkie2004

I was there Friday night as well and your car is amazing! It was nice chatting with you for a bit. I had no idea you were on the forum. I'm the guy with the black Z06 btw.

-Javier-

Jebbysan

Nice clean pass..............good air will bump you over the 130 mark as stated.

Jebby

gkull

There are items that are made to ensure long term durability and very little adjustment maintenance of roller lifters.

#1. Billet steel cams with the largest practical lobe base center diameter.
#2. The use of quality stud girdles that capture the Allen locking nut for the roller lifters.
#3. Larger .904 diameter roller lifters.
#4 The lightest high quality lifters.

You can have your machinist determine if the lifter gallery bore casting, that allows the lifter bores to be drilled and sleeved to larger sizes allowing lets say a .904 diameter lifter in a Chevy engine that comes as a typical .842 lifter bore diameter. It is very common in race motors to have this mod. The larger lifter bore allow larger and stronger wheel diam. and bearing and axle diam. components and while larger parts tend to weigh a bit more that's not always a significant factor. If you can add 50% to a component strength and 100% to expected durability adding 10%-15% to the weight is an excellent trade off.

This is just an example. Both of my engines use Crane Pro Solid roller lifters.

http://www.libertyperformance.com/pr...4-diameter.php

suprspooky

Great pass, mid ten IRS is very impressive. I'm with George on some sort of Velocity stack/Air Cleaner, I could see an RPM difference on my Jet Boat testing Velocity Stack (best) vs open Carb top vs Flame arrestor (worst).

I'm super happy to hear that you had noisy Morrel Lifters because I was very worried this past fall that I was developing a problem with mine (didn't get motor back in car til fall when it got colder). I guess I'll be putting in a smaller brake booster so I can do inspections as you suggest

Little Mouse

Huum im behind the times what happened to the 69 ? Life is good another solid lifter convert.

cv67

Solids rock, more power and of course they got that "sound"...no need to adjust them all the time.
Know a builder who feels the same about rollers and that funky pr angle they have. He runs a simple 427 with compression, AFR heads and a nasty SFT cam been driving it for years without one issue
Driveable 10 sec street car.

ajrothm

Who me? Mine has always been a 71'. This car used to be dark green. Just finished a restoration on it.

TimAT

I went thru this with my 496. I asked about using the bigger diameter lifters. Machine shop was all for it. I went with reliability over everything. They did bronze bushings in the lifter and fit them for .903 diameter solid rollers. Ended up with Morel lifters, Trend .080 wall pushrods, T&D shaft rockers. Comp custom ground cam with a cast distributor gear. It's a solid roller cam too.