[Greg Reimer 7376]

What a thorough but concise answer to the problems we in Stock Eliminator have had! This person makes perfectly good sense. It seems that the word of the day here is variables, in that, some people can build a motor and it breaks in and goes the long haul for season after season, and other times the same engine builder builds one that can't get past the initial fire up and break in interval without killing the camshaft. Cast iron is a material that has variables within it by nature of how it is, with softer spots in some places than others, the items like core shift and an unevenness in how things may move around as the engine is running, as well as possible un evenness in thermal expansion rates. add to it that blocks made starting in the early '70's were thinner than their predecessors which didn't help in that area. The fact that the lifter hardness varied so much won't help, as well as quality control issues in the machinery that surfaced the face of the lifter adds to all this. He is right in that the answer to all this is to use a roller camshaft as a replacement for the older flat tappet set ups.
Back in the mid/'70's, it seemed that OEM Chevy motors, both big block and small block, had an unnatural spike in camshaft failures. I remember seeing cars still with half their warranty left having cam and lifter failures as a rather common thing. In 1980, I took a job with the county mechanical department which included both LA County Sheriff's cars with 350 and later on 305 Chevy Novas,Malibus and by 1986 the big Impalas, as well as all kinds on Chevy/GMC trucks, and scarcely a week went by that we didn't have at least one cam and lifter failure hit the shop. There didn't seem to be any obvious answers back then, but by 1990 or so, the steel camshafts with hydraulic roller lifters came along and that seemed to end it.
The answer that seems to be the simplest solution is to go to a steel cam and roller lifters in the basic Stock Eliminator engines. Since the only spec currently being looked at in a tear down is valve lift, it would seem that some kind of a rev kit that would minimize modifying the block to any real extent would be a good answer.
Some of the problem, one that they might not be able to fix, would involve locating the block in some kind of fixture where the lifter bores could be fixed and replaced with some kind of a bushing. Any of you guys with bushed lifter bores having cams go flat? A properly bushed lifter bore could be installed more accurately and may alleviate a tendency toward an improper angle of the lifter bore that would negatively affect the contact pattern of the cam and lifter.
Maybe the thing to do is confront the fact that the restraint on max valve lift has pushed the design limits to the max, and the solution is to use a roller cam with OEM lift and duration specs.We already have roller rocker arms allowed as well as the ratio is the same s the OEM ratio in regards to valve lift. Maybe its time for NHRA tech to allow for conversion to roller cams as well as OEM lift is maintained. Just a thought, but it seems like a possible answer to eliminate the quality control issues we're all facing right now.