Crane hydraulic roller tappets for 351W hard to find

[Tommy]

I was rebuilding the 351W in my car and decided to upgrade to a Crane hydraulic roller cam. I learned today that the matching lifters (#36532-16) are on indefinite back order because the company that makes them went out of business. Rather than wait, I decided to switch to Comp Cams parts. I'm posting this in case anyone else out there is about to place an order for the hard to get lifters.

[Jack21]

You won't regret switching to a hydraulic roller. The torque, mygawd the torque!

CompCams uses an OEM Ford lifter, and a reduced base circle cam to make this work. Mine works great, but you can't just slide in any FMS roller cam, or the lifters will stick up out of the bores.

Crane uses (or used to use - as the case may be) a shorter roller lifter and a standard cam.

Crower makes some interesting looking grinds for retrofitting non-roller 351W motors.

Rollers, however, tend to pull a lot more vacuum than flat tappet cams. The carb gets a stronger vacuum signal and may run rich on you when you first start dialing it in. Don't be surprised if you have to lean it out by 4 - 6 jet sizes to get the A/F right again.