408 hyd roller, too much spring pressure?

Aussie Charger said
You asked if I bothered to read this thread – not the entire forum! :eek:

And what do you expect me to find? Racers breaking beehive springs at 9000rpm or whatever? Is 8000+rpm a realistic goal for the average street-driven musclecar? Because if you are focussing purely on the hard-core racing community, you are missing the much bigger picture of all those people on the street trying to build what they can within their budgets to suit their daily or weekly driving habits with maybe a few squirts down the track each year.

Again, with respect, we are not all full-time (or even part-time) racers.

And just like 99.999% of us are NOT full-time racers with unlimited budgets for exotic titanium valve gear (or whatever), I wouldn't be bold enough to say that 99.999% of the time the issue of retainer to rocker clearance is rocker geometry, as there are always exceptions. I had one myself a few months ago where my machining instructions weren't listened to and I was forced to go to +0.050" locks because the only other alternative was to machine the spring pockets on an iron head to use the springs that I had matched to a custom cam.

There are many ways to skin a cat.

I’m bold enough to say it. 99.999999999999% of the time when a rocker and a spring hit the geometry I wrong. Simple as that. It’s not bold. It’s a fact.

You can run a 1.525 spring diameter (and probably 1.550 but it’s even awhile since I’ve used anything that needed a spring that diameter) IF the geometry is correct. You can run a 1.640 spring IF the geometry is correct AND you use offset shafts and stands.

So please explain how a guy running a 1.450 spring has the rocker hitting the spring. It don’t happen.

And my point about RPM killing BH springs was ONE example of where they don’t work, even though the asshat that ground the cam said it would. The company that made that springs said they do NOT work for things like that. So they aren’t the do all, be all, end all of springs. They are God’s gift to performance.

I didn’t expect you to read the ENTIRE forum. There is a search feature. Just type in beehive spring and like magic (or voodoo on your point of view) a ton of threads will pop up. Then instead of going off half cocked, you can read for yourself all the times when a BH spring was said to be the fix, when the fact is the geometry was wrong.

Beehive springs aren’t new or new technology. They’ve been around for decades and decades. The aluminum 215 Buick had them. So they ain’t new or trick.

They have a place. I just can’t think of what I would ever build where THAT spring type would be a benefit.