Recent improvements in camshaft and valve spring design have placed greater loads on the pounding solid roller lifters must suffer. Moreover, the demands placed on street engines are even harder than their racing counterparts. Heat soak and long periods at low engine speed can compound the problem too. The sane thing is just not to run solids on the street, but to a lot of folks—us included—it just isn’t possible to ignore the sound, fury, and raw power a solid roller cam delivers.
For this reason, we took a hard look at a solid roller lifter failure we had in Project Laguna last year, and did some research on some premium lifters that we think are up to the task: the pressurized Lunati, the Isky EZ-Roll, and the COMP Elite Race. All have fine designs that incorporate pressurized lube to the roller, and high tolerance manufacturing—among other things. For a quick video introduction to these three lifters, click here. The full story will be in the June issue of PHR.