FYI ....

Here is a real good video by Gwatney Performance that explains the various types / brands of lifters available for the LS engines:

 

Good stuff.!!!

 

The low down, GM uses the stock lifter tray to keep the lifters from rotating.
When you increase the lift of the lifter, then mean that the lifter is going to wear out the tray faster,less contact with the flat sections, and what allows the lifter to rotate; for the roller/cam lob to do damage to each other.


Now before the lifter trays, pairs of roller lifters where linkaged to each other to prevent the from rotating instead.

Hence back in the SBC 350 days, not uncommon to use solid roller lifters with anti rotation connector links, have a motor rev out to 8K, and not have the twisting roller problem.

So simply, the problem is not the rollers, but the anti rotation device used in the LS engines the problem. The plastic trays work on standard lift heights, but when you start to get into the .600" and above lift heights, here is where the stock lifter trays don't work so well, and allow the roller lifter to twist. So what is needed, is to first redesign the trays to work with linked lifters, and to use linked lifters as well.

So something like this is a step in the right direction,
, but again, do want the lifters to be linked to prevent anti rotation as well.


Hence even the best lifter in the world, is going to have problem when it rotates,the roller wheel and the cam lob are not in the correct rotation against each other, from a OEM $9 lifter tray not doing what is supposed to do when faced with more than OEM lift instead.

Or, instead of making the lifter lift more in the channel/tray via cam, change the rocker ratio to make the rocker lift more instead. Granted that this means you would want caps on the top of the valve stems to give a wider contact surface for the rocker rollers, but it does help to resolve the lifter rotation problem below at least.

 

That's what I did to my stock cammed LS3 ... Instead of installing a high-lift cam, I just replaced the stock 1.7 ratio rocker arms with Comp Cams 1.8 ratio roller rocker arms. These rockers increased the stock LS3 cam lift from .551”/.525" .-to- ..583"/.556"

However, Comp Cams said nothing about using "caps" on the end of the valve stems when using these roller rocker arms (they are just drop-in replacements)

Note: . However, I did replace the stock valve springs with a set of PAC #1218 'beehive' springs that allow for a max safe .600" cam lift and have an increased seat pressure.







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