Are We loosing the war against fuel push rod reliability?

Was refreshing the top end on my 440 and pulled the fuel pump and push rod for inspection. I've got maybe 30 hours and an hour of road race trach time on this engine. Carter pump, Comp cam, factory push rod. Good news was unlike the Comp pushrods I've had wipe in the past (different engines) this one wore uniformly, lost .022 off of the Cam side I believe. Forgot to check as I removed it, caught it as I was cleaning parts for inspection.
I've got one of the super BA units from Hughes on it's way to go with a new Hughes cam.

I'm getting on my last nerve dealing with fuel pump push rods and bronze oil pump drive gears. Getting ready to source MPFI with Coil on Plug ignition and an externally driven oil pump. This is getting ridiculous.

Melonized gear for the cam here and Howards bronze tipped pushrod. 6000 miles, lots of passes and zero issues.

I got a deal years ago on an 80,000 mile '71 GTX due to a worn fuel pump push rod. I've seen problems with them for 50 years. Seems like such a simple item. But I'll bet cars and engines have been junked because of them and the inability of the 'mechanics' to discover that they were a problem.

Spare fuel pump push rods and ballast resistors were 2 things that I would always keep lying around.

What kind of cam type, flat tappet or steel roller cam, and material, steel or iron core, are you having the issues with your pushrods?

In my application it was a very mild Comp Hydraulic flat tappet with a stock push rod. In the past I lost a couple of Comp pushrods to a Indy built 505. Tried a Mancini one in a mild 383 as well before the owner gave up and swapped the engine to fuel injection.
I do feel like a spread sheet of data among those of us that have lost them may help build a trend. I'm seriously starting to think it may be fuel pump related in either clearance/preload and/or spring load of the pump. I remember in my younger years the smaller bodied NAPA pumps never gave us any issues, until the manufacturing went south and the lever arms started falling out and into the oil pan. After that I went to the Carter units. never had a issue for some years (luck)? and then recently seems these pushrods just don't last. Unfortunately all my failures except for the 383 were on fresh engines, so who knows.

The modern parts that are available are not being manufactured to 1950s Chrysler print specs as they should be,
and have not been manufactured to proper specs for many years.

Specific processes were used back then that carried over until the end of the big block run. It seems like a cheap part to make but it's
not just a machined part.

In classic fashion: Chrysler will not share the print with anyone, specs are proprietary, so there is just about no chance of anyone
attempting to make the part properly since they don't have the right information.

Years ago held the historic print in my hand and had samples of oe spec+ the common garbage on hand. The common garbage is machined and
missing the heat treat and so forth. There is nothing mysterious going on there somebody doesn't know how to do, it's just that nobody does it.

ARP has a way to request a new product on their website. Has anybody talked to them about making a doomsday pushrod that will survive?

Isn't ARP over a year behind on getting fasteners out the door?

They might be. I’d trust them to make one that is quality. I went and just submitted a request. The page came up blank twice when I hit submit so no idea if it made it.

Other guys might as well take a couple minutes to suggest it so we have a chance at getting it made.

https://arp-bolts.com/p/kitsuggestions.php

i just filled out the ARP suggestion form.
i used a factory push rod for the dimensions, so hopefully it will help ?
and like you, the page went blank when i submitted it, so ?
if others fill out a request, maybe ARP will run a batch. i offered my factory rod to be used as a sample if needed.
as this is a super simple part, it would be a cake walk to program up a run.
the big thing would be the material and the CORRECT heat treat.

I’ll try and call them and see if they are getting these requests.

I have an engine we’re that should still have the pushrod in it. Might be helpful for them to have a few on hand to compare and/or test for hardness.

I've reuse many stock pushrods on rebuilds with new cams, both solid and hydraulic liftes with no issue on any brand of cams
i have seen some wear on the tips running against the fuel pump levers but nothing alarming
I have 5 or 6 stock used ones in the shop that I could use in the future but I now recommend to my customers to upgrade their fuel systems to good high volume electric pump and dump the stock mechanical types