I'm just wondering what you guys think is the best quality brand for flat tappet cams. What will last me the most miles. I know roller is the way to go but I just don't have the money for that. I heard comp and lunati is junk so is the best isky and crane? I've been researching for a long time on how to break in flat tappets properly and use the proper oil during every oil change. I'm just scared of the cam going flat and hope I can get a few years out of it.

 

I have a Comp Cam in my 350 with no issues yet.
I think any decent brand will last it broken in properly and high zinc oil is used.
The highest zinc oil I have found "off the shelf" from local stores is Chevron Delo 15w40
It has about 1400 ppm zinc and costs $12 per gallon jug at Walmart. For Flat tappet cams you look for 1200 ppm or higher.
Most of the regular 5w30 or 10w30 oils only have 600-800 ppm.
Amsoil, comp Cams, Joe gibbs, Edelbrock, Valvoline vr1, Brad Penn, all make high zinc oils for flat tappet motors.

 

Comp. Cams have never let me down. FWIW.

 

Just because of the stories of counterfeit and/or outsourced chinese lifters rebadged under major brands that may or may not have questionable metallurgy... I prefer the old GM style lifters.

I had a lot of issues with v1.0 and v2.0 of my build, and had to abort TWO SEPARATE BREAK INS plus the third time I managed to miss a rocker setting valve lash and I decided to abort about 10 minutes into that to go through it again. It had maybe 15 total minutes of run time, stop and start, lots of distributor adjusting, some bad spark plugs after sitting for 6 months in the elements you name it I had an issue with it.

And the lifters held up fine. Every time I aborted I pulled them and compared the wear patterns on each lifter to make sure none were cupping before I tossed them back in (on the same cam lobe, obviously) and I had ONE that was doing something a little odd after the first 5 minutes of run time but settled in nicely.



I re-lubed them each time, but it was the comp red lube that everyone says does mostly nothing... who knows. It worked for me. Of course I used rotella and ZDDP supplements and everything and I was SUPER paranoid about cam failure, I almost just bought a new cam but after looking at the wear patterns I decided nothing was broke just yet.

Then immediately after the first time around the block after I got them totally broken in, I got a crack in one of my .060 over 010 block(never again...) cylinder walls from them being too thin and got total milkshake going on, and I pulled them AGAIN and they all looked great.

The point is, and I had read this a while back, those "Hard face" lifters with the different metal at the bottom were the traditional GM OEM lifters, and only one company makes lifters like that, and it's therefore easier to verify that they are in fact quality, american-made lifters. Around the time I got my cam there was a rash of cam/lifter failures and many were blamed on one of the companies ramping down production leading to a burst of overseas lifters being bought to meet demand. By the time I bought mine, about a year or two after that, these were the lifters included with my comp cams kit. But because tehy're so unique, I know they're not the normal lifters sold by comp cams. So I imagine that after all the failures they had to become more selective about which lifters they sold until they could meet demand themselves, and so I got these lifters with my Cam/lifter kit even though they're not really Comp lifters.

Long drawn out story with a lot of weird caveats... but I know these lifters can deal with hell, and they're still working great in the car now, 5 years later, and they had a real rough break in period. So Im a believer in these. If you can find the ones with the different bottom on them, they're good in my experience. I see them referred to as "Delphi" lifters from time to time.

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/e...h/viewall.html

You can see the picture of the lifter that looks exactly like mine. So if I were to do flat tappet again there's no question which I would use. They are available on ebay and other places.

Now that's just lifters... for cams... until I learned about the lifter situation, I would always keep like brand with like cams, and that's what I did, I just happened to get GM/Delphi lifters with my Comp cam, in a comp box. So Comp clearly doesnt have any issues with them. I worry about some of the more aggressive modern cams. I have an xe262 and I think in theory it's ramp rates should be the same as any other XE line flat tappet cam. The bigger ones just need stronger springs. But the Lunati voodoo cams hit such high lifts for hte durations I have a lot of concerns over how durable they are. Something like a 280H is old school, and with consistent ZDDP formulated oil I would have no concerns with a modern aggressive grind, but oils aren't made for flat tappets anymore. Something like a 280H will make the power, and sound a lot raunchier, but you will lose some of the drivability you would have had. But if I were to do it again knowing what I know now... Delphi lifters and a Comp Magnum cam with ramp rates that may not be cutting edge, but are tolerable, and hopefully wont require quite as much spring pressure and maybe be less prone to failure. Thats my logic, whether that works or not I dont know, but if you're gonna take a risk on a flat tappet you want as many things in your favor as possible. Plus as lazy as those Comp magnum cams are, they're WAAAAY better than a lot of those summit brand or edelbrock brand 60s cams that people love to use. mw66nova did 12's with a 305 with a 280H cam.

Note: The 280H requires pretty good compression, stall, and gearing. It is streetable if you set up the car properly, but it's one of those cams that requires you set up the car properly to use it. An xe262 or xe268 will be more forgiving in that regard, but they still have the modern aggressive ramp rates, although not as crazy as the Lunati voodoos. If the 280H is too big, maybe try the 270H.

Comp and Lunati are probably the most popular so they have the most haterz. Isky probably makes good stuff, but their grinds just arent geared for street cars at all last I looked. There's almost nothing in that middle ground of streetable hot rod that looks good to me in either of their catalogs. Howards has some cool stuff and they're a quality brand that sort of flies under the radar, so look into thier stuff. In order to recommend a cam we need to know what your gearing/stall/heads/intake/compression are. The better you do all that, the bigger the cam and more power you can make and still be able to actually drive it. If theres things that you cheap out on or are too lazy or broke to do, ie gears and stall, then you are severely limited on how much cam your setup can handle without just being a piece of crap with no power. If its more of a stock setup, I'd find something in the 215/215 +/- 5 degrees range at .050". If a little raunchier, stay around the low 220s@.050, if you're willing to gear it and stall it properly, 230/230 is about as big as you want to go, and that's the 280H. But if you've ever heard one, they sound incredibly good.

For my setup I couldnt afford a stall (ended up going to a T56 amongst all the crap I dealt with over the year and a half it took me between pulling the stock engine and getting a working one in the car) or proper gears, so I stuck with a pretty small xe262 cam. It's 218/224@.050. It's one of the modern, aggressive ones, and despite what i put it through it turned out fine. But there's lots of guys who have xe series cams and despite the best laid plans they failed. You only hear the horror stories though, so you just have to take the plunge at some point.

 

Bullet racing cam ground on a premium core along with their lifters. Awesome setup.

 

Good post.Well said.

 

Comp cams has been good to me, I got my cam and lifters together, proper break in was done for the most part there were a couple hickups. I run it will shell rotella T. I have recently emailed Shell and they say rotella 10w-30, 15w-40,5w-40 synthetic and T6 all have at least 1200ppm of zddp and 1100 phosphorous.

When I changed the heads to vortec I found no issues with any of my lifters. The engine had about 3000 miles on it I think. Here is a pic. judging by the link I am starting to think they may be GM lifters can anyone confirm?

 

They're not made by GM itself, but they're GM OEM lifters. Other lifters dont have the parting like a quarter inch above the lifter face... unless other companies have adopted that design. But it seems like a more expensive way to do it to begin with, so I would imagine (hope) the Chinese wouldn't bother with trying to copy it.

 

does anyone have any experience with crane or isky cams? I am leaning towards crane. Thanks for all the replies

 

Hey thank you so much for taking your time to reply and I did read this an apprciate it. I do know what duration range I'm gonna go with I was just wondering what is the best quality flat tappett because of my fear of a cam going flat. I am really considering going with a comp cams magnum now or crane. I will look at howards also. I plan on going with howards lifters that are the direct lube ones.

 

Good post on the GM lifters

Isky crane crower all good stuff
Never had an ounce of luck with comp flat tappet nor HR for some reason

 

I had a Crane Compucam flat tappet in the 305 for 5 years of daily driving, no issues. Had a Comp XS282 in a 396 for 5 years of racing, no issues. Used AMSOIL synthetic exclusively in both after the initial break-in.

It's almost impossible to know what all went on before when people show their catastrophic failure pictures on line. I suspect improper break-in is behind most of them. Improperly matched parts is probably close behind.

 

Be aware with the direct lube lifters you will lose oil pressure. Its a sort of give and take there... Im not really sure how I feel about them as I've never used them. That may be one of those cases where a high volume or high pressure oil pump actually makes sense.