camarostylin

Can you use Hydraulic lifters on a cam made for solid lifters? in either event, they will be rollers, so they can handle an aggressive lift profile, and since I'm interested in Hyd. lifters they will have the "cushion" effect on the cam and valve train. the cam I'm looking at is the Comp Cams extreme energy grind number XR274R that will give .564/.570 lift with 1.5 rockers. seems extreme, but the duration isnt too bad compared to lift, and max hp is between 6000 and 6500, perfect for my street car and not such an extreme RPM that Hyd. lifters would go flat and lose a ton of lift.

the problem is, this grind calls for mechanical roller lifters and I DO NOT want to use them on a car that I plan on driving a lot, and I'd much rather keep the noise level down from under the hood (I know that doesnt make a lot of sense with such an extreme build, but I'll be using a conservative noise level Hooker Aero Chamber muffler and I have a holley stealth ram system to keep it a little more tame at low RPM). I have little interest in adjusting solid lifters all the time either. So, i've googled some things, but still cant find any definite answer. I'm interested to know what you SBC guys have to say about this.

Apeiron

You might find you lose a lot of lift at low speeds. A hydraulic cam has a steeper skirt to quickly raise the pressure inside the lifter and snap the piddle valve shut so the lifter doesn't collapse, but the solid cam has a broader skirt to gently take up the lash and set the lifter back down.

Damon

Forget it. Use a cam that's made for hydraulic lifters. The lobe design is different between the two. On rare occasion I've heard of people using solid lifters on a hydralic cam using very tight lash (.003"-.004") but the other way around doesn't work. Solid lifter cams have lash ramps designed to take up the dead-space in the valvetrain (the "lash") on a solid lifter, but hydralics have no such lash to take up.

Also, remember that solid lifter cams don't achieve the full valve lift they are spec'ed with. You must subtract the lash from the lift spec to arrive at the true valve lift. So a solid cam with .520" lift and a .020" lash spec will only achieve .500" actual lift at the valve. Once you do that you'll find they don't lift the valves much more than an equivalent hydralic cam does.

camarostylin

well damn.... that really sucks. this cam seems to be PERFECT for my setup. anything that's slightly different apparently has huge power losses by comparison