Hydraulic roller lifters camshaft questions on a 440

I know this is the new technology right now, but’s when its retro fitted into and old platform, there can be issues. I just built my first hydraulic roller lifter motor for a customer who just had to have one, along with roller rockers. Upon advice from a board members here, I bought the setup through him. Over all, I am pleased. So is the customer. It was a custom comp grind and good lifters( not comps) with the rockers from Mancini. They are made by Harland Sharp for Mancini. It has great vacuum of 15” at idle for power brakes and has great low end on this six pack motor. My only concern are it is a little noisy in the valve train area. I had my engine machinist listen to it and he had heard nothing that was out of normal noise levels. I was told to not put a high volume or high pressure oil pump in because the excessive pressure would wear the gear out faster. I have the hardened gear from Hughes. With 15w-50 Driven oil, It idles cold at 45 and hot at 25. It runs down the road at 40-45 warm. The bearing clearances are 3.2-3.5 on the mains. I now from experience that mopars loose a lot of oil pressure around the lifter bores anyway but are rollers worse? Should I bush the lifter bores on my next hyd roller 440. Motor hauls a$$, so customer is happy. Any thoughts?

you might be surprised at what you pick up in low rpm oil pressure by tightening up the bearing clearances for a street engine.

I would say it this way......

If you’re expecting the quietness of an oe hyd cam/valvetrain using a retrofit hyd roller cam & lifter combo in an old school platform that includes a typical performance lobe design....... you’re going to be disappointed.

They more often than not will have comparable operational noise to that of a tight lash SFT street oriented profile.

A quick google search for “hydraulic roller lifter noise” will bring you tons of hits for pretty much every engine platform and lifter brand out there.

I went thru oil pressure issues years ago with my solid roller cam motor. It had high bearing clearance. Mains and rods were around .0038. I tightened up with .001" under bearings. It did absolutely nothing for oil pressure. My engine pushrod oils. Turned out the pushrod feeds were .090". Tightened them up with roll pins to aprox .050". Night and day difference. internall leaks will overcome low volume. Once its hot the pressure is low. Either tighten the leaks. Or add more pump volume. In my case the bearings didn't leak enough to make a difference.
Doug

I tried to run a hydraulic roller, but it didn't match with my driving style, and inadequate valve spring pressure limited my higher rpm usage to the point of valve train instability. I went with a solid roller and would never go back to hydraulic roller in an RB application.

I did find that intermediate shaft gear wear can be substantially reduced by using a collar on the distributor shaft to limit the up and down movement on the intermediate shaft gear, which controls and stabilizes the contact area between the cam gear and the intermediate shaft gear.

Without the collar on the distributor shaft, the distributor shaft tang and the female receiving slot on the intermediate shaft are what limits the up and down movement of the intermediate shaft. Mine was able to move up and down almost 1/4 of an inch before the tang would bottom out, and that excessive movement really wore the softer intermediate shaft gear. I switched to the melonized gear when I installed the new solid roller AND I run the collar. Wear is virtually nil at this point.

On a related note, I also run the aluminum body Milodon oil pump with the altered gearator shape compaared to the stock gearator design, which requires less power to spin and consequently reduces the load on those two gears at a given rpm.

All good thoughts guys. I don’t have pushrod oiling so that should not be an issue. It has good pressure hot running down the road. Customer does not mind the valve train noise. I’m sure the profile of the cam has something to do with it. I love the fact that it sounds a little lumpy at idle, has 15” of vacuum and really has low end drivability. It revs very quickly and breaks the tires loose in first and second at will. The six pack was easy to tune with that much vacuum, too. I’ve got the rev limiter set at 5800. It was still pulling hard when I “ hit the chip” the other day. I’ll give to him and we’ll watch the pressure. I’ve got the melonized gear so maybe it won’t wear as much.

What were the specs on the hydraulic roller cam and the springs you were using?

One shops take on the noise........

http://www.hughesengines.com/TechArticles/12hydrauliclifters.php

And then, WITH the proper spring pressure you can adjust that Hydro roller .020 from the bottom & yes they are still noisy LOL

Me too. Ran like gang busters, but floated the valves around 6000. They can't handle much rpm in a big block Mopar from my experience an research.

"What were the specs on the hydraulic roller cam and the springs you were using?"

It was an older grind. with 246 I/252 E duration at .050 and just over .550 lift with 1.5 to 1 rockers. I believe it had a 108* LSA.. I don't recall which springs it had, but it turned out the installed height was not correct and the resultant spring pressures were slightly too low. The springs began to lose control of the valve train at around 5800 rpm. The resultant valve train harmonics ended up disintegrating the needle bearings in my exhaust rockers. The intake pushrods were dampened by flexing just enough that they started touching the outside of the intake ports. The whole process was not really detectable by me while it was happening, as the motor would still pull like a freight train to 6500rpm.

I spotted some bits of metal in my heads after coming home from a car show and doing a routine valve covers off check. It took the sleuthing abilities and knowledge of Dwayne Porter to pin point the root cause of losing just the exhaust rocker bearings. He went completely through my heads, spec'd me a solid roller cam and helped guide Ross through spec'ing a custom piston to lower my compression ratio from 12.2 to 1 down to 10.2 to 1 while still having maximum quench. He rocked the set-up, and Mike at B3 Racing guided me through optimizing my rocker arm set-up. I also upgraded to 7/16ths Manton Stage 5 pushrods. Those things are burly.

I believe the spring pressures set-up was close to the limit of potentially collapsing the lifters if they were too much higher, but that is just speculation.

never set the preload so low. NEVER at .020 from bottomed out
All the instructions I've seen show from .020 tp .050 preload max, not .150 + preload
I use from 1/4 to 1/3 turn preload depending if the adjusters are 3/8x24 thread with 1/3 turn or 1/4 turn with 7/16x20 threads with a 1/4 turn HOT especially with aluminum heads

Not going to argue, it works GREAT !!!!

Not all hyd roller lifters are created equal.

Very valid point.

I’ve heard that. That’s why I bought them from a expert. My machinist recommended Morrels and I did not go with them. I figure it’s the ramp speed of the cam on this profile. I was taking a buddy of mine for a ride in the car and he mentioned his 340 flat tappet hyd motor made racket with roller rockers. He uses ray Barton cams. The customer doesn’t mind. His other car is a stock 68 hemi RR. It makes noise for sure. The car runs great and that’s the main goal. It has great vacuum at idle and low end is real good, giving it great drivability for street car.

Thank you.