Dan W

So I have a bit of a problem... this weekend a few seconds after getting on it a little (6k in first and 2nd) I started hearing a loud ticking noise. i shut it down and had it towed back to the house (thanks AAA). When I pulled the valve covers, I could see nothing wrong. When I pulled the intake I found that one of the legs from the spider assembly had bent upwards allowing the retainer to come off the lifters which allowed the lifter from the #1 cylinder to rotate in their bores. This damaged both #1 lifters and the cam.

I'm running a Lunatti Vodoo Cam part #60122 231/239@.050 .530/.550 lift. Stock 350 roller block all stock lifters, spiders, retainers and pushrods, 1.5:1 full roller rockers and AFR 195 heads with the springs they come with.

I plan on putting it back together with the same cam... should I just replace the broken parts with OEM ones? Should I replace all the lifter components with OEM ones? Should I shell out the bucks for aftermarket roller lifters?

Has anyone seen this happen before? Is anyone running a similar cam with stock lifters? Is there anything wrong with running this cam with this lifter system? Any guess on what caused this?

gofast51

I think you should check to see what the valve springs are good for lift wise. Sounds like you got into valve float and lost control of the valve train.Alot of the aftermarket heads only come with springs that are good for .480 lift unless you pay extra for better springs.

7.0 camaro

get rid of the spider!! those things are junk. they make hydraulic rollers wit htie bars for those cheap. much more reliable than a peice of sheetmetal.

SpitotRs305

those lifters with the "tie bars" are for strip only as in they DO NOT recommend them for the street... Replace your OEM setup with OEM parts...how many miles on those lifters and that spider? i am betting around 100k... how would VALVE float effect a lift and make the spider bend? unless you are lifting those dogbones right off the block with that cam

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Tie-bar lifters are fine for the street. Been driving em around for decades now.

Never seen em for what I'd call "cheap" though. If you know where to get them "cheap", alot of people would like to know about it.

The main problem you'll have, is that regular roller lifters like we've all been using for all this time before the factory created their weird thing, won't fit the specially modified block for the factory system. The lifter bore bosses are too tall, so the tie bars will sit down on them and not alow the lifter to drop all the way in to the cam. "Special" regular roller lifters to overcome this flaw in factory roller blocks, are certainly NOT cheap.

Best thing to do is just get another spider, 2 more lifters, and a cam; make sure of course that there's no metal shavings running around in the motor (which there most likely are...), and put it back like it was.

But if the metal got past the oil filter as it probably did, then the motor will have to come ALL THE WAY APART, so you can run a rifle brush through the passages to clean it out. That means the heads off, crank and pistons out of it, cam bearings and ALL the plugs out, and a trip to the quarter car wash with rifle brushes (NO, vatting alone won't dissolve metal shavings). Otherwise, you'll just end up doing it all anyway, except you'll also be replacing another cam.

I'd also suggest adding the AFR rev kit. It's ideal for keeping this from happening.

7.0 camaro

here i've done the hard work for you.

this is the jegs part number. 249-850-16 . they are the same thing that i use except mine are solid roller. they don't say nothing about how you drive it. street or strip or on a round track it don't matter. rpm is rpm.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

850 is the OEM style lifter, for use with the dog-bones and spider.

853 is the regular original-design link-bar type.

This is the "special" version of the original design (with link bars) that has the extra height to go in roller blocks. Only $100 more per set than the 853. Ouch...

7.0 camaro

soafakingdom is right. you need to spend some dough.

check dougherbert.com

thats where i bought mine. and they are solid roller. .300 taller. for $209.99