Which Hydraulic Roller Lifters?

[70ChargerRT]

I read your failure that lost 2 link bars, that sucks.

Short travels are much harder in parts than a regular lifter. I attached Hylift Johnson’s explanation. They are not like a solid lifter.

Those Morel’s were a poor choice on your engine, but it still should have lasted longer than 2k miles. Breaking one link bar is bad luck. Two says something was really wrong some place. Or Morel sent out some real junk.

I have seen Johnson’s limited travels hammer out the pin crimps on a tiny 218* @0.050” Lunati HR cam that only went 2000 miles on 2 lifter. Insane..I like Johnson, but even they have sent out some turds.

View attachment 1969406

Guess I made another poor choice lol but it could be those Chinese rebranded ones lol like the rebranded Johnson’s lol

 

[Dodge Bros]

Guess I made another poor choice lol but it could be those Chinese rebranded ones lol like the rebranded Johnson’s lol

Sure hope not!

As long as they operate quietly Johnson’s usually do well. The Johnson’s that failed clattered the whole time, and were not set up that well. But still should not have failed. One axle was half slid out, but a second axle slid all the way out and the roller fell into the rotating assembly and got wedge between a piston skirt and cylinder wall. It was a mess!

 

[Mopar Hunter]

So they only last 2k miles? If anything a reduced travel lifter should last way way longer because they act more like a solid roller lifter. If they’re not lasting 2 things are happening. A crap design like my morels or the engine builder doesn’t know how to set them up, way different than setting up a regular Hydraulic lifter. Its my fault for using the morels and Ill own it, didn’t do the homework, just sound advice lol. This time Im going to a Johnson reduced seat height and travel. Bob Madera thinks they’ll last. We’ll see.

Do you remember the item number for the Morels that went bad?

 

[andyf]

Which Hydraulic roller lifters did you use in your BB? Share the good and bad. Would you buy them again?
I'm going hydraulic roller in my 361 stroker build and want to see who's had good luck with the brand they chose and who hasn't.

We use Gaterman when they are available.

 

[Randy Wilson]

Latest Comp Evolution lifters call for .075” preload.
Back off till there is clearance, then get them to “zero”, then about 1-1/2 turns from there.

As told by the man I bought them from @PRHeads

Thank you

 

[70ChargerRT]

Do you remember the item number for the Morels that went bad?

I bought the lifters off
of Trick Flow which I confirmed were Morels. I do remember when I called Morel they told me I was running the wrong oil. Said I should have been running 5w40. I didn’t even ask which lifters they were at the time. The only lifters that Morel recommends running 5w40 are the short travels I believe.

 

[RemCharger]

Do you remember the item number for the Morels that went bad?

These are the ones I got ,about 4 yrs ago

 

[PRHeads]

The limited travel Morels are shown as “race only”, and as I recall are about twice the money as the normal street lifters.
They use different bodies that don’t really look like the street lifters either.

 

[qkcuda]

There is a new set of BAM bushed solid rollers for sale on Mopar Swap Shop right now.

 

[Road Grabber]

As someone just entering the world of roller lifters I was under the impression that I was out of the loop by not ” up grading” to roller lifters used by car manufacturers today. Even a builder who assembled my 340 said I was the only one asking him today to use a flat tappet cam.
Three pages of posts have been about issues using them with examples of failures resulting in high cost repairs.

Is it worth the risk? Is there that much “gain” in performance? Solid lifters were used for years. They just went to hydraulic because of less maintenance for street buyers.

If you make sure you use zinc oil and break in a flat cam properly what would be the performance difference between using a flat tappet cam vs roller cam?

I’ve had a purple shaft 284/484 perform flawlessly for decades. Can you expect to use a flat tappet cam with the same lift options as a roller cam or are the flat tappet cam grinds limited so that you can’t get high lift cams with enough vacuum to operate power brakes? I didn’t use the 290?/501? Cam years ago because of idle characteristics and power brakes.

If I can use a mid .500 lift flat tappet cam that performs like a roller cam game over because otherwise I would be wondering if the next time I drive the car will my engine **** the bed because needle bearings got jammed against my piston skirt.

High dollar bushed rollers don’t seem to be a street solution not to mention crazy costs.

So if you can achieve that same performance why not use flat tappet cams? If you love rollers great. I’m just looking for thoughts here on the design justification.

 

[Dodge Bros]

The hydraulic lifter continues to self adjust after it fails, digging into the cam, there is no warning at all. Even if it breaks a link bar, it will compensate for a bit with the lifter sideways and quietly destroy stuff.

I know of tons of examples that were caught before the failure happened to the point the cam was ruined on mechanical roller cams. We had SR bearing start to go out on our race car, it was caught on a maintenance lash check. With a quiet full exhaust system on a street car a roller starting to fail is usually pretty audible on a mechanical cam. There is no warning at all on the HR bearing failure.


If you can piece together a dependable flat tappet cam and the cylinder heads level off flowing above .5” lift anyway, the roller set up that can open the valve .6” or .7” isn’t offering much advantage. The hyd flat tappet can be oversized a little and make similar power, but the HR’s extra area will provide more low end average power. If the head flow peaks out at .7” lift and you use a cam that has .5” lift there can be a 50 to 80 HP increase switching to a .7” roller. Depending on the cam size, a flat tappet has more limits on the maximum lift.

A low maintenance dependable option on the street with good power is a nitrided mechanical flat tappet with EDM face oiling. But the cam cores have been going extinct.

 

[Road Grabber]

The hydraulic lifter continues to self adjust after it fails, digging into the cam, there is no warning at all. Even if it breaks a link bar, it will compensate for a bit with the lifter sideways and quietly destroy stuff.

I know of tons of examples that were caught before the failure happened to the point the cam was ruined on mechanical roller cams. We had SR bearing start to go out on our race car, it was caught on a maintenance lash check. With a quiet full exhaust system on a street car a roller starting to fail is usually pretty audible on a mechanical cam. There is no warning at all on the HR bearing failure.


If you can piece together a dependable flat tappet cam and the cylinder heads level off flowing above .5” lift anyway, the roller set up that can open the valve .6” or .7” isn’t offering much advantage. The hyd flat tappet can be oversized a little and make similar power, but the HR’s extra area will provide more low end average power. If the head flow peaks out at .7” lift and you use a cam that has .5” lift there can be a 50 to 80 HP increase switching to a .7” roller. Depending on the cam size, a flat tappet has more limits on the maximum lift.

A low maintenance dependable option on the street with good power is a nitrided mechanical flat tappet with EDM face oiling. But the cam cores have been going extinct.

Thanks for that experienced explanation. Still not a cut and dry option though. Using race application components don’t fair well on the street when you are looking for low maintenance durability. The quest for power seems like a bit of risk disintegrating the engine- not just the cam. Old technology has been proven but has a higher risk of poor quality cam material that can fail. Thank you China.
Maybe buy an older cam someone has for sale that passed the quality control era and stick with midrange power band flat tappet.

It’s a Catch 22. It’s not a simply cam switch upgrade like it used to be IMO. Cheaper China manufacturing seems to play a role.