Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

I've read some places that there's no problem in doing this and have a friend who ran one like this all last season but I'm just wondering what some of your opinions or experiances are with this. I was told to run tighter lash and my friend seemed to have good luck with this.

Juiced-- Back when Johnson Lifters firsted closed their doors, roller hydraulic lifters were tough to find. Some imports hit the market and they were junk. I had 3 engines to build and dyno test, and the import roller hydraulics were having problems, and I dropped in some solids and changed pushrods and they worked fine. I tried lash @ .003, .005, & .010. I sent them out with .005 and have had no problems. Go for it.

Are there any benefits/drawbacks from doing this.

Greetings, All,

No expertise here, but long experience. Back in the bad old days of primitive valve springs and the first hydraulic roller cam lobe technology, it was a bit touchy to run solids on a hydraulic profile. With today's fast action solid lifter profiles, they have little to no lash or clearance ramps built in anyway. Not as great a difference to begin with. Better valve springs are a huge help in getting away with this.

My question is, since a camshaft is such a two-dollar item in the overall cost of a performance engine today, why would anyone want less than the best possible cam profile and performance?

thnx, jv.

I just have some parts laying around for a low buck build.

I have been running solid roller lifters on Comp Cams hyd roller cams for about 5 years.Comp told me to set them at 6 thou.You do need to run the solid roller springs.I run 200 on the seat.I have the same setup in 3 engines with quite a bit of street driving with no problems.Tom

About four years ago, There was a class out here on the west coast where you had to run hydraulic lifters . I got trogether with my cam designer guy at Comp Cams, and we came up with a killer combo that really worked. He told me what lobe profiles to use and I put hydraulic roller lifters on a pretty stout mechanical roller profile. It would rev right up to 7500 or 7800 RPM and was no problem at all.. I have not heard of anyone going the other way (solids on a hyd profile)JOE SHERMAN RACING

Joe,it was Dean Harvey that had me go to solids as he did not feel comfortable running the hyd rollers on their 400 lobe lift cam at over 6500RPMs.That was on a RA V pontiac.Tom