[BlackoutSteve]

Pity about your intake/dizzy gear issue Fred. Hope it's all sorted now.

Mark 4 blocks are old and also used worn tooling later in their production life (so I have read). Their lifter bores were never made that accurate because they never intened to have rollers in them and rollers need to be bang-on.. What makes it worse is already worn lifter bores when used Mark 4 blocks have new rollers fitted into them.
Because of the splayed push-rod design, there is a lot of side loading, so lifter bore wear can be an issue on a well used, standard bore block. Who ever has them checked?

No need to bronze bush as I will simply rebore them accurately to 0.904" and use those +0.062 oversize lifters. Larger lifter diameters are stronger, have more surface area and have a larger roller wheels, axles and bearings, so it's an added advantage. ..and I have plenty of spring pressure to take care of their small increase in weight.

Street driving (lots of idle time) is said to be one of the main, if not -The Main causes of solid roller failure. Not much oil is slung off the crank at sub-1000rpm speeds to keep the rollers lubed -even if you have lifters with pressurized oil feeds to the roller bearings like I have.

Needles bearing rollers are a problem. A bad idea in my opinion and the market is flooded with them. Their is not much collective surface area on those few little needles under the axle. They don't remain nice and evenly spaced around the axle during operation -they bunch up and move around a lot. Any foriegn crud that gets into them will lock them up, or at the least will damage them and their races. They are fragile so any excessive lash or valve float smashes them and pounds them out-of-round, and the roller relies on them to be located on the cam accurately. Proof is their bearings require very frequent rebuilds.

Bronze bushed roller lifters seem to be the only way to go at this stage in history. (Isky's EZ/EZX/EZMax) They are not the ultimate solution but will eliminate most/all of the above and there is at least one guy on another forum claiming twenty thousand miles of street driving on a set and with a sub-1000rpm idle speed.

With regards to lash, if you find it, there is a reason. Don't just tighten it up and off you go (-like I did. ) If it ain't an easy find like a bent pushrod, it will be the lifters. Pull them.

[bigblockragtop]

This is all amazing to me.
I was just wondering if there is all this trouble with solid lifters why not use hydraulic lifters?
Are there any stock new engines that use solid lifters?
I mean on an engine that does not see 6k plus rpm is it necessary?.
Also do the hydraulic rollers on a bbc have the same problem?
I never new oil could be too slippery wow. I have always used synthetic except on my bbc and was going to change over to after I got maybe 7500 miles on, is that a mistake?
I feel like a little kid soooo many questions.....

[Eleanor's Nemesis]

Originally Posted by bigblockragtop

This is all amazing to me.
I was just wondering if there is all this trouble with solid lifters why not use hydraulic lifters?
Are there any stock new engines that use solid lifters?
I mean on an engine that does not see 6k plus rpm is it necessary?.
Also do the hydraulic rollers on a bbc have the same problem?
I never new oil could be too slippery wow. I have always used synthetic except on my bbc and was going to change over to after I got maybe 7500 miles on, is that a mistake?
I feel like a little kid soooo many questions.....

The problem appears to be with the rollers, I have read about this in other forums that are racing specific.

BBC's have a very heavy valvetrain, and when using some pretty radical lobes things can get touchy.

A good flat tappet solid lifter can probably do the job without a big loss in power. I'd either look in that direction or call Reher-Morrison and see what they recommend.

[gtotomm]

Im having luck w/ a rev kit. Not many people want to talk about it. Hi pressure, not hi volume oil pump(80 psi), and the use of zddp, has me into the 5th season w/ my rollers. Blackoutsteve i sent you a pm.

[BlackoutSteve]

Originally Posted by bigblockragtop

This is all amazing to me.
I was just wondering if there is all this trouble with solid lifters why not use hydraulic lifters?
Are there any stock new engines that use solid lifters?
I mean on an engine that does not see 6k plus rpm is it necessary?.
Also do the hydraulic rollers on a bbc have the same problem?
I never new oil could be too slippery wow. I have always used synthetic except on my bbc and was going to change over to after I got maybe 7500 miles on, is that a mistake?
I feel like a little kid soooo many questions.....

Not counting the more agressive ramp profiles or higher (potential) rpm that a solid has, the only difference that I can see between hydraulic and solid roller lifters is when at zero lift. The hydraulic has a preload to keep itself in contact with the lobe but the solid lifter is set with a ~0.020" clearance where it's roller is able to skid on the lobe and that may also cause skewing. Isky talk about it here -where they also recomend the use of a rev kit as prevention.. http://www.iskycams.com/techtips.php#2008
I also wonder if the tie-bar that paired lifters share to keep them in line may actually be a reason for them skewing. It's not hard to imagine that the one lifting is having an effect on the one at zero lash..

Race solid roller also seem to be more reliable as they don't see idle time like street engines do. As we all know when running in a flat tappet cam, there is little oil being thrown around at idle, hense the ~2000 rpm run-in speeds.

ZZ572/720 is the only solid roller crate engine that I am aware of from GM. Not in any production car that I know of.

[bigblockragtop]

My roller lifters are Lunati's which are made by some one else from what I understand. They are hydraulics. I was told to use Valvline vr-1 racing oil and that is what I have been using. I was hoping to change to a full synthetic after 10,000 miles but after reading this do you think that I am better off staying with the vr-1. i do use a rev limiter I only rev to 6000 rpm. It is a 496 with a d1sc about 700-800 hp I think, never had it dynoed and I street tuned it myself with an afr meter staying non aggressive.

[BlackoutSteve]

So many opinions on mineral or synthetic, but I prefer synthetic because it has just as good lube properties as mineral, but it has a much more consistant viscosity when cold and hot.
With mineral, I used to watch my oil pressure gauge show pressures beyond the pump's bypass valve setting when cold, then drop to 10-15 when hot -all at idle.
When I switched to Mobil 1 (there are much better synthetic choices by the way) cold was 65 and hot was 25. Max hot was 65 in all cases as that was the pump's bypass valve setting.
A flowable oil when it's cold is one of the more important considerations I think.

[ace's68]

Originally Posted by BlackoutSteve

Not counting the more agressive ramp profiles or higher (potential) rpm that a solid has, the only difference that I can see between hydraulic and solid roller lifters is when at zero lift. The hydraulic has a preload to keep itself in contact with the lobe but the solid lifter is set with a ~0.020" clearance where it's roller is able to skid on the lobe and that may also cause skewing. Isky talk about it here -where they also recomend the use of a rev kit as prevention.. http://www.iskycams.com/techtips.php#2008
I also wonder if the tie-bar that paired lifters share to keep them in line may actually be a reason for them skewing. It's not hard to imagine that the one lifting is having an effect on the one at zero lash..

Race solid roller also seem to be more reliable as they don't see idle time like street engines do. As we all know when running in a flat tappet cam, there is little oil being thrown around at idle, hense the ~2000 rpm run-in speeds.

ZZ572/720 is the only solid roller crate engine that I am aware of from GM. Not in any production car that I know of.

I have always wondered about this... For SBC's I always try to take the extra time and install a spyder tray and run non retro fit rollers, I've never liked the link bar idea. Also, The BBC's lifters are splayed and linked, I wonder if this is an issue too... My cousin does have a reher-morrison conventional headed 565 (1,200hp) and it consistently breaks the link bars and spits the lifters out. It does not have a rev kit. I know even on the LS engines they have had issues with the rollers, they are noisy, and I have seen a few bad ones, they all seem to fail right in the center of the roller and squeak terribly. I don't think any big power BBC's ever really idle... I know most n/a BBC's will idle anywhere from 2k-2,500 when warm and probably average 6,000rpm more than anything else. But the cams probably also don't see much splash as they are dry sump or have tons of baffling. It is a complicated matter for sure, I read an article, I think by hot rod about 2 months ago on this issue, said something about new roller lifters with a caged design to take the stress off of needle bearings.

[gearheadslife]

my last bbc I used an oil accumulator, to pre oil before starts..
and did quite well with that cam/lifter set installed in 2000 and engine is still running the same cam/lifter set.. I put 12k on it. and sold it in 2003 and the guy puts about 3500 on it a year.. (used dino oil and zipp ) cam was a comp cast roller with lifters that didn't oil the rollers with psi oil

my new bbc will have the cam area closed off from the bottom making a swimming pool for my cam to be swimming in oil , it'll be in a bath..
I will run a rev kit, and dino oil with zinc ad/zipp, syn oil is to slick in a street car and drains off to fast..

I'm willing to bet most of the wear is from the lifter climbing the lobe ramp on start up with zero oil.. also most guys add a windage tray, that frees up HP but takes some oil slinging out of the crankcase

after looking at some very high rpm engines that sing at 9500rpm for 4+ hours..
the oil cam bath seems to be the way to deal with some of the issues.. having no valve float will help.. spring oilers are on board in this bbc also.. and I'll use an oil accumulator again for pre oil the lifter galley

the last bbc was a 402 this one is a 489..

also loose the oil filter bypass..

[gearheadslife]

Originally Posted by 540 RAT

An old-timer over on the Corvette Forum said the same thing awhile back. And when asked how he figured that was the case, his reply was that some old-timer cam guy had told him that when he was young, but he personally had nothing to back it up. So, I was wondering why you say the same thing he did, since analysis shows exactly the opposite, that the loads are highest at max rpm.

Here's why:

One of the most fundamental equations in Physics is F=MA, which stands for force equals mass times its acceleration. Now if we apply that to one of our roller lifters as it accelerates up its bore as a lobe raises it, we see that we can omit the mass for general discussion since the mass of the lifter of course does not change. So, we are left with force or load (same thing) on the lifter, being proportional to its acceleration. Obviously as the rpm climbs, the lifter accelerates up its bore quicker and quicker. And the only way to accelerate the lifter quicker and quicker is for the force or load on the lifter to increase in order to do that. Since we can't argue with the laws of Physics, the load on the lifter is the lowest at idle (or really just rolling over with a wrench) and the highest at max rpm. If you just do a simple sanity check and think about it, it makes perfect sense. You are really whacking those valves open extremely quickly at high rpm. An analogy might be a bullet being fired out of a gun. If you want to accelerate it quicker to get more bullet speed, you need more gun powder behind it to provide, you guessed it, more force.

I'll add this.. at lower speed the oil has more time to get pushed out of the way and instead of an oil "film" you mnow have metal to metal.. and is why the load is(becomes) higher at low speed/rpm
physics have other rules.. just say'n

[BlackoutSteve]

Is that with a solid lifter roller?
I personally don't agree with the "zero oil" assumption within an engine that has sat for a short time between starts. Have you ever opened an engine that has sat for 50 years without running? You'll see a nice fat film of oil in still within the bearings.
As for the cam lobes, pull an engine apart remove the cam and you'll have plenty of oil on your hands after handling the cam. So, a roller especially will still have some film of oil on it for the rollers that really don't need much at all to simply roll upon at very low cranking speeds.
Knowing how oil remains within the bearings of a very old engine, there will still be plenty of oil within the bearings of the rollers.

Is the cam bath idea common amongst engine builders? Where does the oil drain back, or do you have restrictions to limit how fast/much oil returns to the pan.

Yep, lose the filter bypass, but don't forget most filters have bypasses in them too. I use a System1 filter and just bought a non-byapssing base plate for it, #214-0440.