Originally Posted by BSB67
At some point you'll just need to make a decision. You will get endless arguements on both sides.

Couple of observations:

1) very rarely do people do a true root cause for failures. Even "professionals" are often speculating.
2) people have collectively run millions of miles on non-pressurized, needle bearing roller lifters w/out failure.

Folks (today) talk about how the bushed roller is better, and the need for positive pressure oiling, and idling just kills them. Sounds good. Where's the data, and analysis?

I love the opinions of professionals. They a immensely valuable contributors here and on other sites. But remember, when they are making recommendations to you, the last thing they want is for you to come through the door with a problem. There is almost no up side for them to tell a customer that they should run a solid roller cam. In fact, it would be silly to do so, IMO.

Here is what I believe to be true to a long happy experience with a solid roller:
1) pick a sensible street type solid roller. If it cannot live with 200 on the seat, and 500 over the nose, its not sensible.
2) buy a good needle bearing roller lifter. If you want to add insurance and $, bush it with direct oiling (just remember, there is a consequence with sending more oil everywhere).
3) lash them tighter than looser, all within reason.

This is what I did. And my idle oil pressure is 15 psi. Lots of idle time and low rpm operation, and my valve train is well behaved even at 6800. Thousands of mile. Lifters are fine.

Is it zero risk, of course not. Is it right for a daily driver that you want to get 100,000 without opening the hood, no. Right parts, good parts, reasonable care, reasonable expectations.

All that said, is the cost worth the HP increase to you?




All day long... My limited experience is with solid rollers in the race car. Mild, around 300 adv. dur. and .660 lift. I have experience with some cams on big engines with over 1" of lift but I had nothing to do with installation and the like. Only checking and making adjustments. Spiegel was breaking valve springs on a 5" bore 669" deal. He had to mellow the cam slightly to have 25-50 run reliability. About the same R&R schedule as tires for the top ten in the world. I threw some race car parts on a 400 along with the cam into a Dart Sport. It doesn't make a ton of power but runs really good. Idling under 1,000 rpm with it is probably not the best thing so I don't do it. 11 or 12 is fine and sounds great providing enough vac. to the carb. I couldn't see having a cam that won't go to 8,000 rpm. I don't run it up there but I sure like the pull from 6-7000! The Challenger never goes under 6,100 from the time you let go of the button unless on the throttle stop. It's usually between 7,200 and 7,600 at the stripe where it is put in neutral and shut down every time. I have 4 sets of Comp 829 lifters that are, at least once a season, being rotated and sent back. When they are not rebuildable Comp will replace those with new ones. For basically $150. It's only been more when I had to replace a couple. I broke one tie bar in 2013 after I bought the car back and it had been flogged with no lifter maintenance for two years by the temp. owner. I have replaced the oil/dist. gear 3 times in about 1,500 runs. I don't know how it got that many as 300 seemed to be the limit for it. Bad log booking I guess??? Solid rollers are gas hogs to no end. Even with the street car and a 750HP carb. It uses about 5 gallons to go 20 miles at 45mph and above. Very hard to keep my foot out of it for any amount of time with a converter that's just stupid for the street. I don't beat on it ultra hard though. It's only seen 7,000rpm a couple times. It pulls really good past 4,200. IMO if it's any kind of hot rod, solid roller all the way.