http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=2411715261

This guy is selling instructions on how to use OE hyd roller lifters in a non-OE-roller block. I considered trying to do this too but haven't had time & don't have any OE roller parts at my disposal. So what is he doing here, making a flat surface for the retainer plates & tapping the holes for the spider? What else would you have to do to make this work?

 

either tapping a hole to bolt the spider to or welding a tapped boss in the lifter valley. cam retainer might be a little harder to do. i wouldn't buy it, good chance someone here has done it without his instructions or your local machine shop has.

 

Yes.

He's using the die grinder to make the clearance on top of the lifter bores so the factory retainers will sit on top and hold the lifters.

Next he installed the cam, lifters, and retainers in place and laid the spider over them to line up the three holes in the center. He marked the holes, removed everything, drilled and tapped the holes.

The only downfall of doing this is you have to use a cam button to hold the cam in. There's no way to put a retainer plate on the front of an older style block. Cam buttons aren't made for the smaller factory bolt pattern on factory cams. You'd still have to buy an aftermarket roller cam so you can use a cam button, I think. I'm not 100% sure about that though.

I've never used a cam button so I don't have experience with them, but I know you do have to use one if there's no front plate to hold the cam in.

 

I always thought the crank timing gear and tension kept the cam secure... someone explain..installing my cam soon

 

On cams with flat tappets (be it hydraulic or solid cams) there's a slight taper on the cam lobes. It does two things. 1.) It keeps the lifters rotating in their bores 2.) It forces the camshaft toward the rear of the engine.

Roller cams have perfectly flat lobes. There's nothing to keep the cam from walking outward. The cam wants to go forward because of the gears on the distributor. The dissy is turned by the cam, and the way the gears are set up, the cam is forced forward.

True...... the tension will keep the cam from flying through the timing chain cover, but it won't keep the cam from moving back and forth. There needs to be a cam button or a retainer on the front of the block to keep the cam from moving back and forth.