How to tell roller cam or not

[ajd89]

Eating and having a speedy way to get to them while still fresh.

Speedway? No how bout Krispy kreme

 

[78C10BigTen]

My question is.... having not ever rebuilt an engine, whats the difference between a flat tappet and roller cam?

 

[gpmorgan]

The roller or hyd roller cam has different lobe profiles to open and close the valves faster. The lifter has a roller where it contacts the cam lobe. I thought only the vortec engines got the roller setup. Not sure. You can check your engine id numbers and probably find out what it has.

 

[Honky Kong jr]

Speedway? No how bout Krispy kreme

No a speedy way to get them not speedway but I think Speed way sells Krispy Kreme lol or Dunkin I forget.

 

[fussfeld]

Funny, but the v-6 got roller lifters from 87' on. Both cars AND trucks.

 

[Honky Kong jr]

My question is.... having not ever rebuilt an engine, whats the difference between a flat tappet and roller cam?

Roller cam is better that’s all you need to know.

 

[87silveradok20]

Roller cam is better that’s all you need to know.

From a performance aspect yes they are. But if you look at it from a cost aspect not so much. Roller cams are about 3 times as much as a flat tappet. Most of the time a flat tappet will do just fine for lower horsepower street applications.


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[Honky Kong jr]

From a performance aspect yes they are. But if you look at it from a cost aspect not so much. Roller cams are about 3 times as much as a flat tappet. Most of the time a flat tappet will do just fine for lower horsepower street applications.


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How much is another engine rebuild if a flat tappet cam goes south in a freshly rebuilt engine? Roller all the way in my book and big block too.

 

[87silveradok20]

How much is another engine rebuild if a flat tapper cam goes south in a freshly rebuilt engine? Roller all the way in my book and big block too.

That’s true to. All depends on how you wanna look at it


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[Honky Kong jr]

That’s true to. All depends on how you wanna look at it


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You can look at it like this too, pretty much everyone went roller now and have gas engines going over 300k flat tapper is hard pressed to make it to 200k. Not saying impossible but with today’s crap oil not likely.

 

[bucket]

How much is another engine rebuild if a flat tapper cam goes south in a freshly rebuilt engine? Roller all the way in my book and big block too.

I wish I could double or even triple like that post, lol.

 

[Daveo91Burb]

x2 (or 3 or 4 or whatever) on roller cam all the way. No break-in worries, no $10/quart oil, cam and lifters last WAYYYY longer, can change individual parts, etc. etc.

I bought a $300 vortec roller motor core. Plan was to use entire valve train AND both heads, but only one head was usable. Had to pay core ($100) for the other vortec head and I still feel like I got my money's worth. (Although I was able to get some money out of the short block along with some TBI heads).

My experience with these motors mostly matches up with what's been said.

- Most '87 up truck motors have the standoffs and holes drilled and tapped, true for both my '90 and '91 4-bolt motors at least.

- There's rumors on the net that even some truck motors had rollers, but I've never seen any hard evidence.

- I've read lots of places where 350s from cars like Caprices had factory rollers, but no personal experience.

- 96 is when they switched to vortec heads and I believe all Vortecs were rollers. (and wasn't the 4.3 "vortec" much earlier than the 350? Could be reason they were rollers earlier, too?)

- all these motors had stamped rocker arms, vortec, tbi, whatever. No full roller or even roller tip rockers on any of this era of SBCs, AFAIK.

 

[CSFJ]

It's odd chevy waited so long to go roller. I had a '85 LeSabre that came with the 307 Olds engine. That was a roller engine. Not sure if those were from the begining or not, but at least by '85 they were. That was a weird setup. They threw a lot of good parts at it, and still ended up with a gutless mill.

 

[twinturbo427]

To be perfectly clear, NO 350 TBI left the factory with a roller cam. All had hydraulic flat tappet from 1987-1995 installed in engines with L05 build code.
The part about the blocks being "roller ready" except for later years is true.

The way I view using a flat tappet cam with current oil formulations is like building your new engine dependant on leaded gas.

I do love the sweet music from a solid lifter cam though.

 

[Honky Kong jr]

To be perfectly clear, NO 350 TBI left the factory with a roller cam. All had hydraulic flat tappet from 1987-1995 installed in engines with L05 build code.
The part about the blocks being "roller ready" except for later years is true.

The way I view using a flat tappet cam with current oil formulations is like building your new engine dependant on leaded gas.

I do love the sweet music from a solid lifter cam though.

Solid roller