Quote:
Originally Posted by PANAVIA
I wanted to hear experiences with *roller cam* converted FE's -- who have you used, was it worth it , what did you like?
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Steve, I don't think there are any real issues with hydraulic roller camshafts in an FE. Now solid rollers
may be a different story. I know back five or so years ago there were durability issues with solid roller cam setups in an FE -- they just weren't lasting very long (the lifters, that is). Most fellas were only seeing a few thousand miles as I recall. Obviously hydraulic lifters see plenty of
oil, and there were threads discussing whether it was smart to block off the galleys (like you traditionally do with a solid cam) with solid roller lifters. Some said leaving them open was smarter (some say that though on just regular old solid flat tappets as well). I kind of remember, although I may be imagining it, that there have been improvements in the solid roller lifters over the last five years -- so if you see a thread from 2002 over in the FE forum complaining that their solid roller lifters only lasted three thousand miles you might want to read something more recent.
EDIT -- I think the distributor gear problems have been overcome. I haven't heard any problems on that in a while, but maybe people are just in the habit of changing them out after so many miles? Not using an iron gear applies to both hydro and solids -- but, you know, pulling the distributor to press on a new gear is not a big deal (especially if you just take the new gear and distributor to a machine shop and tell them to do it). Anyway, those were the two issues that I remember: 1) Durability of the lifters; and 2) Durability of the distributor gear.