Alright you guys...I talked to Ryan Jr. again this moring, to give him credit he took the time to answer all my questions and did not rush through any of this. For a guy like myself who sees this kind of expenditure once in a blue mooon this was pretty important.

OK, so what's the story here?

Well, on the point of "why no direct roller/valve tip oiling" his answer was: normally this is not required. There is enough splash lubrication, even in a street setup that is sufficient to coat things. In fact, he did say that they specifically put up the "potential need for oiliing restriction" message on their webitsite since some setups, like those which run the full-time oiling to the heads (by having the cam journals machined for oil passage) can in fact put too much oil up there. He did allude to the cases where this happened and too much oil was simply causing other problems. In such cases they recommend that at least a provision be made in the heads to install a threaded plug, so should the need arise now or in the future to restrict the oil flow this does not require an additional trip to the machine shop. We did not talk about the spring cooling impact of the oil splash, which is something I was well aware of and yet in the "heat" of the conversation completely forgot to mention.

On the subject of the size of the valve tip roller diameter, he did say this design change allowed them to provide for more spacing to clear larger valve spring retainers. Some rockers are still made with the smaller rollers, however the SB Mopar stuff uses the larger stuff, not just the roller but the pin as well. This has been bulletproff in "...hundreds if not thousands of applications...".

What else?

Well, I asked him about a higher rocker arm ratio like 1.7 (I am purchasing 1.6 which will get me a valve lift of approx 0.590" with my hudraulic roller cam). His response was: tried it, but it had proven to be problematic. That ratio required a lot more clearance in the body of the rocker (machining by the pushrod side) which made for a thin area of the rocker fulcrum, that was not a comfortable situation for them, so they decided not to pursue this any further. I am thinking depending on the rocker material this maybe a less significant issue, so using steel as opposed to aluminum would have a bearing on this.

OK, that's about it. Hopefully I am not forgetting anything...as I called him he was literally in the process of finishing up a set of the precise rocker arms I ordered, which as it turned out was my Summit Racing order.

All in all this was a very pleasant experience with the Harland Sharp folks!