Club Cobra - Roller lifters reliability

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My other car has a 428 Cobra Jet engine in stock form! It's a 69 motor with approx. 28,000 miles. The problem is detonation with the stock heads. (I do not not want to keep on spending $5.00 a gallon for 100 octane gas) I have bought a ford police interceptor aluminum manifold that will go on it eventually. The car has a C6 auto box. I want to be able to drive the car long distance to club meets etc. My engine builder told me that I should get rid of the stock iron heads a put a set of 72cc Edelbrock. I will change the cam to wake up the motor as well! My questions is: Roller hydraulic or flat hydraulic? I want to stay with hydraulic, I want a very reliable motor, with very good idle and low end power. I will keep the Holley 730cfm and the vacum advanced distributor, the only sacrifice to originality will be: Edelbrock water pump, Edelbrock heads and a set of custom headers! What do you think? I think I might be able to get around 400hp that way, is it realistic? Should I port the heads and manifold? any comment appreciated!

Is your intent in this exercise to get away from using Premium fuel?

Think you're confusing apples and oranges. Solid rollers vs hydraulic rollers.

With the exception of some Chevy solid rollers which are made for street use (CompCams), most solid rollers are race only items.

Hydraulic rollers are another story. Most cars today come from the factory with hydraulic roller cams! The Mustang Five-Oh has had 'em since '85. These motors power everything from Stangs to trucks for well over 100,000 miles on the original roller lifters. My CompCams retrofit roller came with stock Ford hydraulic roller lifters. The factory uses them because they generate less friction. Less friction = better fuel economy.

What gives out on high lift profiles are the springs, not the lifters, because they get hot. To improve the springs longevity, have them polymer coated with an oil retentive coating to impove oil cooling. Airborne Coatings did mine.

Something else CompCams advised was to return the roller rocker arms every 50 thou or so to have the trunion bearings and roller tips replaced.

When you replace your solid rollers with hydraulic rollers, check the lifter bore clearance. From the photos, it looks like there's some scuffing on the lifter bodies (both of them) indicating the lifters rocking side to side in the lifter bore.

hmmm...I dont have to rev the p!ss out of my motor to make power..that is the whole point of good heads.... a high-lift long-duration roller cam drawing air through off-the-shelf heads is like you trying to breathe through a straw...hehe Bowtie

My roller rocker broke this weekend!

Heres the link to more informtion.

http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/show...threadid=57383

Heres the pic of the damage seen so far:

http://www.clubcobra.com/photopost/d...and_roller.jpg

Are YOU running roller rockers on the street? Be afraid, be very afraid! OR, be willing to replace them on a regular basis!