Anyone know if there's anything big involved with swapping a cam from an 86 305 with flat tappet lifters to a hydraulic roller lifter cam setup? I'm assuming all that needs to be swapped are the cam and lifters right? Aren't the pushrods and everything else compatable? What about the distributor? I've got a distributor out of an 87 305 (hydraulic roller), will that work with an 86 motor? Thanks.

 

The push rods will be shorter.

You can't use the factory roller setup in a 86 block, because it requires all sorts of special modifications to the block. You simply use the roller setup that all the rest of us had been using for decades before the factory "invented" rollers, and totally porked the pooch in the process. What is now reffered to as "retrofit" rollers is simple, effective, and works in any block. On the other hand, the factory's summer engineering intern's sophomore project that they somehow slipped into production, is none of those things.

All you need is a regular roller cam (not a factory roller cam, that's different too), a set of roller lifters with the little links holding them together in pairs by cylinder to keep them from turning, a cam button that goes between teh nose of the cam and the timing cover to hold the cam in place, and shorter push rods (because the roller lifters are taller).

 

Alright sounds good, should I be checkin' out a comp cam set then?

 

Yes; or Lunati, Ultradyne, Crane, etc. All of the major cam mfrs that make real race stuff make rollers.