Turning hyd. rollers to act like solids. Who's done it and how have some of you done it ? Show me the most down and dirty way, to the most extreme in machined made parts.
Down & dirty,,take a hyd lifter apart & remover the spring & plunger. Re-assemble lifter with a piece of drill rod of proper dia & length.
I put used solid lifters on an old hydraulic cam once. Put a very, very tight lash on the 1.6 rockers and used cam break-in lube and the proper high zinc oil. Ran for over 3 years like this without any issues. I recently replaced the cam for a solid roller with more lift. Other than that I nomally don't like to live that close on the edge though...
1969 I was 17, neighbor gave me a 270 Duntov cam saying it would really pep up my 283. Well no money, so me and my buddies just took out the springs, put the clips back in and shifted it at over 6500 RPM. seemed to run great. We just didnt know any better and it worked. never had the nerve to try it again.
Heres why I'm asking about doing this, a lil more info needed. I know of FuelRoadster way and even using stacked washers. My consern is what Deuces brings up.
An old street drag racer told me the trick was to back the lifters (hydraulic chevy) out to zero lash-instead of 3/4 turn adjustment and they would act like solids but still be able to compress. I never did try it, though.
That is what I was going to say. It has been done with hydraulic flat tappets for a long time. We used to do it with hydraulic rollers for harleys way back when also. On the hawg the hydraulic lifter engines had adjustable pushrods.
That's also a great way to gain more engine vacuum... That's why I always went a 1/4 turn down from zero lash or less...
The compression of the lifter is what i'm wanting to remove. The ramp on a roller is so fast compared to flat tappet. So all the lift and duration is not there. Actually the less lash on a hyd. lifter is so it wont pump up at high RPM. At that point valves do not close completely and performance drops.
I run my stock Pontiac 400 with hydraulics up to 6,500 RPM all the time and run about 1/4 turn from clacking. Why would you need anything else? My car does 0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds. 11.7s in the 1/4 .If you have any problem with hydraulics over solids you better step up to a faster ramped solid roller.The cushion that you talk about does not hurt any performance. If you experience any valve float, you better get better valve springs and as you will float even with solids. Royal Pontiac tuned Pontiac engines from the factory and did the close to 0 lash deal way back in the 60s and a bunch of other things to gain power. It was called the Royal Bobcat tune up.
No valve floating going on. I'm in the middle of examining valve train and want to see if any gains come about by this. There is rpm and power gains to this or this trickery would not be excersized.
Depending all on your cam and combination. Most engines stop making power way lower than valve float. I installed solids on my bike that had a hydraulic cam and nothing noticed in power gain. With a solid cam, they could use a faster ramp but installing or making hydraulics into solids on a hydraulic grind won't help unless you are using heavy breathing heads and a huge cam that you need 8,000 rpm shifts. Then if you have an engine built like this, you'd also need a 5,000 stall and real low gears to utilize the potential power. To me, the effort is not worth the outcome which will be pretty much zero.
I just put some Howard anti-pump lifters from Donnie and he told me the same thing, to run zero lash. I thought it was strange but I'm not the cam grinder so I will do as he says. This is for my 241 dodge hemi.
Years ago they sold kits to "Collapse" your hydraulic lifters. You would then still have to run very tight clearances because hydraulic cams are ground without the take up ramps. Cams in those days went away petty quick and collapsed lifters didn't help. Guys running in stock class would indeed adjust their rockers until the lifter was fully pumper up and had .003 or so clearance. Acted very much like a solid in that the lifter couldn't pump up any more and hang the valve open. I ran collapsed adjusters at Bonneville once and it worked fine.
I've been running my hydraulics on SBC and BBC at zero lash for decades. I've always found they perform better and last way longer by running zero lash.
Johnny, whatever you do, don't run a solid or homemade solid roller lifter on a hydraulic flat tappet or solid flat tappet cam. Disaster will happen to your engine. Solid roller and Hydraulic roller cams are made out of billet steel and able to withstand the increased spring strength required for a roller. Just an FYI
This is the way you adjust your hydraulics to perform like solids. No lifter pump up to float the valves. All my hydraulics are set up close to 0 for this reason.
Hi Jonny, You weren't clear on the cam you were using, only that you were using hyd rollers. I just don't like to assume cuz I've seen sme pretty jacked up stuff. Thanks for clearing that up.
Its a hyd. roller. There are those on here that know exactly what I'm refering to when I say CHEATING .
OK, care to explain that a lil better. Here's how I know it, 1) Pump up means exactly that and that happens when (yes) you run more than zero lash. The lifter plunger will rise and the valves do not close completely. That is not valve float. 2) Valve floating is when the lifter flies up off the cam and closes where ever it desides to land back down. Therefore the valve are doing just that floating at no determined place as it should be. This causes loss of power and even valve to piston tagging.
The Jalopy Journal
