Comp 987 springs vs. LS1/LS6 style comp Beehive Springs
 

Has anyone else read the article in Hot Rod this month that shows a comparison between comp 987 dual hyd/roller springs and their LS1 style 96915 beehive springs? They claimed a 1,500 RPM increase by just switching to these springs when using an Xtreme Roller grind. They say that the springs have less seat pressure and less max pressure over the nose of the cam, but still out reved the 987 spring.

This seems too good to be true. I think a single 1.29" spring would have no chance against a 1.43" dual setup w/ damper. Especially if the duals are matched with titanium retainers.

Has anyone had any luck using these "beehive" springs?

Beehive springs are far superior because they are actually engineered. Because the spring is shaped like a beehive each of the coils is a different diameter. This means that the spring will not have a specific rpm where the harmonics of the spring go ape ****, unlike a standard spring which will naturally vibrate at a certain rpm/frequency. The old school/****ty/miss-informed way to fix this problem was to throw more spring at it. This worked somewhat but was a bandaid fix and caused major undue stress to the valvetrain.

In essence beehive springs are like a naturally damped spring.

FWIW LS1's come stock with beehive spring, thats why they can tach up high and the valvetrain and still live for 100,000+ miles.

Now I am debating whether to switch to these springs. I priced them at Summit and for the springs and retainers it would run me about 370 bucks, plus I just assembled my motor about a month ago and I do not feel like changing springs on the car. Long tubes are not the easiest type of header to remove.

Why do you have to remove the headers? You could always buy some LS1 valve springs and get the comp retainers and keepers. That will have you alittle. The stock LS1 retainers and keepers will not work because the keepers will not fit regular SBC valves.

ME Leigh might have forgot to mention one little fact that is kinda important in the beehive spring design. The coils are different sizes yes, but more importantly, as each coil is pushed down the coil beneath it helps to support it. It kinda focuses on that old phrase "You can break a stick with ease, but seven sticks in a group will be much more difficult to break."

I have 987's with titanium retainers. Sry their not installed yet but in a week they shoudl be. but more like a year till i find out how they are. lol

Been using the beehive springs for a while now on small block heads. We've run mostly 918's from Comp with custom retainers for 10* locks. Haven't really noticed significant enough gains with them in terms of stability or HP gains to say whether or not they're "superiorly engineered", but the gains that we did see are probably more due to the lighter weight as opposed to the different sized coils. I still put 987's on my heads ;)

yeh , so i guess the 987 's with titanium retainers would be a pretty good set up so far?

definitely not bad

I have no complaints against 987's so far. While searching some old posts, I found that a lot of people use them even on aftermarket heads like I did. I liked the edelbrock springs ok, but the 987's+ my titanium retainers are awesome and I never float the valves even past 6000 rpm and don't have a rev kit either. I would recommend chromemoly pushrods and some good roller lifters. I used some that I bought from melling and they SUCKed. The engine was noisy on start up and they would pump up at 5900 RPM.

no wonder you used the same spring/retainer combo as me. Were both runnin the same cam. How you like it.

i run 918s in my vert... really is a impressive spring... i dont think im going to switch to anything else unless i goto a race cam... lol.