Solid lifters, hyd cam?

I was readin the instructions on my McGurks and it says to take out the Hydroiic lifters and instal solid ones and their adj. rockers. I thought that was to hard on the valve train. Lookin for input and if I did this would it be streetable or just a real beatin on the valvetrain.

 

There is a thread on here from 6 months ago or so, a guy found some McGurks in his recently aquired caddy mill, and there were some slugs in the lifters to convert them to solid. I"ll try and find the thread for you.


http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=318595&highlight=mcgurk

 

I think it was Greggaz and yaeh I fogot about that. I was hopin someone has run this before and their opinion.

 

Have you tried to see the lift in the cam ?
I really think you found an old hot rod motor ! Sure looks good and not all gunked up like most engines from back then .

 

I'm ***uming that they are plannin on the stock cam being used.

 

When you pull the timing gear off the cam look and see if there is sone grind numbers stamped on the cam . That will let you know if the cam is a HP or not .

 

I was always under the impression that you couldnt run solids on a hyd cam, the profiles are different, but you can run hyd on a solid profiled cam.

 

Thats what I thought, maybe I need to read the instructions again.

 

The Thompson solid conversions were the same way. They were installed in place of the hydraulics, on the stock hydraulic cam.

Goes against everything I've ever heard, but they worked.

 

The problem happens when the "acceleration ramp" tries to do its thing. A solid cam has a slow, gradual lift of several thousandths to stack the parts together gently before the lobe actually starts to lift. If the lash setting is .014", for instance, that's the height of the accel. ramp, and it will take several degrees of cam rotation to take up the slack. A hydraulic cam has a short, abrupt ramp only 2 or 3 thousandths tall, and then the rapid lift begins. If you're willing to make the lash match the ramp on a hydraulic cam (.002 to .003), and adjust the valves about once a week, it's possible. Hydraulics on a solid cam just increase the duration somewhat, because with zero lash, the valve starts lifting while the cam is still on the acceleration ramp. Solids on a hydraulic shaft hammer the cam to death very quickly!
Jerry

 

I know what your sayin I just looked at a ad from Thomas and if you can read it it talks of using the stock Hyd stock cam

 

Ads like that reinforce the old P.T Barnum adage- - - -"There's a ****er born every minute". Just because somebody has it up for sale doesn't mean it will work right, or for very long.
Jerry

 

What he said

in the mid 60s as a 13 year old, I bought "on sale" McGurk solids for $9.69 from Honest Charleys. Bought used mag adj rocker shafts from a local old guy of 23 and my 371 Olds ate the solids and the lobes.....while just running it around the yard. Now, it could be because those lifters were advertized as "malleable Iron"...I asked my Dad but he did not know what that meant. I still don't.

 

Despite the fact that a lot of us look upon some of the "big names" in the hot rod world of yesteryear as gods, this is proof that not all of what they said or did should be taken as gospel today. Do it right---either buy a solid lifter cam and lifters, or a hydraulic cam and lifters.

 

Who exactly is the Big Name of the Hot Rod world in this discussion, cetainly not Thomas?

 

I thought it would eat up the cam or and valve train. I wanted to use the wisdom of the HAMB and not my money to fix something that seemed wrong from the get go.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleable_iron

 

Had the Thomas rockers in a 50 Olds engine with the spacers in the lifters. Set lash at .003 per instructions. Worked for me.