I Need Engine Experts! 340 Roller Lifter and Pushrod Issue

JDMopar said
If I had to guess, I would say the ones Steve posted the pic of are solid rollers for a high HP small block race motor.

Newbomb Turk said
He showed you solid roller lifters. As I said I don’t know if any retro fit hydraulic roller lifters that have the short body.

Of course - that makes total sense that they are solid rollers. I just got so excited seeing them that I didn't think it through :poke: Thanks for setting me straight!

JDMopar said
Morel hydraulic roller lifters, which are what you have in there, are the best hydro rollers you can use in a SB Mopar. The oil band is lower than others, so the band stays in the bore. The ones in my 273 clear just fine, but my saving grace is I used late 80's 302 heads, which have bigger push rod holes, plus my cam is itty bitty compared to the OP's cam.

Thanks, the Morel lifters are supposed to be great, so it is nice to know they work for the application. I'm not worried about the push rod holes either. I think just a little bit of clearance work will ensure that there is no rub.

I spent some time at B3 Racing Engines and read his tech articles. In my case, my rockers are contacting the top of the valve stems in a good position. I'm sure they can be improved by raising the shaft up, and I think I understand about the improvements that provides for duration and valve actuation. So for sure, I will call him on Monday.

But the lost lift still bugs me. I'm trying to find an equation to calculate distance when pushed at an angle. Been lots of years since I did trigonometry!

AndyF said
Are you using checking springs or the actual valve springs? If you are using valve springs then you are probably compressing the plunger in the lifter. The SB Mopar has a stupid lifter angle design that does cause some loss of lift, but it doesn't cause that much loss so you have another problem. The most likely problem is your measurement process.

I don't have a good checking spring so our "spring" was one of us providing gentle upward pressure with our fingers to keep the retainer up. We did check and verify that we were not collapsing the lifter.

I measured off the top of the retainer to see how much it moved down. I set the gauge to zero when the cam was on the base circle, and then measured up until the needle peaked and started going the opposite way. Did it twice and got repeatable results.

Not sure how else to measure this?