Lets talk Solid vs. Hydraulic cams

Still playing with cam choice in a street / strip 451. For a car thats going to weekend duty and the drag strip 4-6 times a year, what would be your choice?, and why?

If you want to play with the tune-up, or if optimizing the power is important to you, I'd say solid lifters. If you'd rather drive it than tune on it, and aren't looking for every .010 you can get out of it, hydraulic makes sense. RPM needs also weigh into the decision.
If you're really after max power, you'd be thinking roller. My
solid lifter cars aren't really that time-consuming to maintain, but the last few motors that see street duty have all had hydraulics. On the race car though I fiddle with the lash.

I like to tinker in the garage & don't mind adjusting the lash a few times a year, so that doesn't bother me. I already have a set of adjustable rockers, so there's no issues there. What about engine reliablility?
Just ran a few cams through CamQuest. To no suprise, a smaller solid makes a little more HP and way more torque, what did suprise me was that the peak HP was made lower in the RPM band (5500 w/ the XS274S vs 6000 w/ the XE285HL). Peak Torque and HP falling within 1500 RPM of each other looks pretty good!

Solids make power & rpm. Maintenance on mild streetable grinds shouldn't be a problem either. In the past I've used solids in both wedge and Hemi engines without any problems.
Now we have new issues to consider that we didn't have years ago. Flat tappets solid or hydraulic are failing much more often than they used to. Rollers are the obvious solution to this problem, but I have real doubts about solid rollers having 100,000 mile plus reliability, which is my personal definition of true streetablity. I think that even with relatively weak spring pressures the axle bearings on a solid roller will be hammered pretty hard due to the required valve lash. OEM hydraulic rollers on the other hand have proven to have good long term reliability.
Aluminum heads, we didn't have them years ago. Now we do and they're great. Light weight, good flow OTB, easy to repair, less time involved in porting etc. They also expand and contract more than the iron blocks they're bolted to. This of course affects valve lash. I don't think that this is a real big deal, but it is one more argument in favor of hydraulics.
I am presently using a Comp 284 xe flat tappet hydraulic in my aluminum headed small blk. I expect it will be the last flat tappet cam I'll ever use. Next time, hydraulic roller.

I just ordered a solid & a set of EDM'ed lifters..From my experiance Big Block Mopars valve covers are gonna leak so you should be pulling them off pretty regularly anyway so why not run the valves while your there...The EDM"ed lifters will put oil right at the contact point of the cam/lifter hopefully reducing the likelyhood of a cam failure....There is proven performance gain with the solid...Why Not???

I know it was not mentioned but if rpm is not the issue why not a hydro-roller? I almost went that route vs a std roller but even the best kit I could find was under 7k rpm and I needed a bit more. So I went with the mech roller.

Prior to that a solid worked much better then any std hyd cam ever could.

there is one issue... I run Pro-Comp stainless roller-tip rockers that have oiling provisions through the pushrods. the adjuster stud is machined for oil passage, and oil into the rocker assembly. is there any such thing as an oil through solid lifter?

Oil thru lifters are easy to find.

I will go with a Hydraulic. The new grinds of hydraulics and lifter design have changed the RPM range so that valve float & lifter pump up doesn't happen at nearly as low an RPM as it used to.
As for hundred thousand mile rollers, they probably would but not with the spring pressures and cam profiles run in these engines. Any way who has to worry about that kind of miles on these cars that are being built will never see close to that.
In my first sentence I should have said that I would go with a hydraulic if I were to build another engine which is very doubtful. In fact I am very close to advertising the car and trailer for sale and getting out of it all together. Only went to 2 show this summer and didn't miss it in the least. Maybe if I were feeling better I would but haven't felt like doing anything and having to settle for doing just that. But Yeah come early spring I think that the package will be for sale.

Lets not even consider rollers, Hyd. or solid. It's just not in the budget.

All of the OEM's have gone to roller cams. This has caused the oil producers to eliminate Zink. Zink is hard on Cat converters but is nesacary for lubrication on solid lifters. Rotella was the last producer to include Zink. And that was supposed to be discontinued in 08. Trust me I learned this the hard way.

No one has mentioned the aspect of the SOUND of solid lifters... Had a '66 Shelby Mustang and the solid lifters added immensely to the enjoyment of driving that puppy...

This is a no brainer.A solid cam is giong to outperform a hydrualic any day.Tests have shown increases over a Hydrualic of the same duration and lift with compensation for lash and other factors.Did you go to all the effort to build your performance engine to sacrifice power?
At the point where a Hydrualic falls off the solid keeps going.If you want to go aggressive without going solid-roller you can even look at a Mushroom cam.

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This is a no brainer.A solid cam is giong to outperform a hydrualic any day.Tests have shown increases over a Hydrualic of the same duration and lift with compensation for lash and other factors.Did you go to all the effort to build your performance engine to sacrifice power?
At the point where a Hydrualic falls off the solid keeps going.If you want to go aggressive without going solid-roller you can even look at a Mushroom cam.

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Not nessessarly. A solid cam with the same lift and duration specs will be a lesser cam than the hydraulic and performance will show it. A .528 solid will be about equal to a 509 after lash is figured in.