Rhoads Lifters On Solid Lifter Cam - Setting Valve Lash

Same here, Rusty. When companies such as Crane, Lunati, Inglese and others (its a long list) leave the hands of the original folks who founded them (or their families), it seems like true innovation and the creative spark that made them great fall by the wayside and the most we can hope for is that their present lines of products remain available and are not replaced by reboxed ChiCom junk.

Of course, Harvey Crane has been away from the company he founded since 1989 and passed away a few years ago. From what he had to say some years back, you could tell that he got screwed over and pushed out by his own Board of Directors and wasn't happy about that at all. In similar circumstances, I'd likely feel the same way.

Nonetheless, Crane Cams continued as a company and still has some great products. I don't know a lot about FAST, the company that recently acquired the remainder of Crane except that FAST had already acquired Crane's ignition division a few years back. FAST is primarily a company dealing with EFI as far as I am aware. I reckon the bottom line is that Crane is now wholly under the CPG conglomerate which owns COMP Cams, TCI Automotive, Fuel Air Spark Technology (FAST), ZEX Nitrous Oxide Systems, Powerhouse Products, GoParts, Inglese, ProRacing Sim and VThunder. Lunati Cams was owned by Holley and a few years back was bought by a private investor group. One of them being Ron Coleman, who owns CompCams.

Anyway...... Youngest son is building a 350 small block Chevy V-8 for his Camaro and in addition to my 360 MOPAR, I am building a 292 Chevy inline 6 truck engine to swap into my '57 Chevy sedan which I tow a boat with and use pretty much like a pickup truck.

As you know, the Chevy engines utilize adjustable stamped steel rockers on pedestal type rocker arm studs. We will run stamped steel rockers on both GM engines, as these cars will be drivers. Crane makes a nice poly-lock for stamped steel rockers on circle track engines (Kool Nuts). Crane 7/16" Kool Nuts are still listed on their website, but Kool Nuts for 3/8" rocker studs are no longer listed. So we will grab a couple sets of each off E-bay whilst we can still get them.

I reckon I should add why we are opting for stamped steel rockers rather than roller rockers on the GM engines, as I am sure someone will wonder 'Why?'......

1. On a daily driver, roller rockers generally need replacement or rebuilding after 60,000 miles. There are issues with the needle bearings which necessitate this.
2. On cams having 0.500" and less lift, there is really no meaningful advantage when changing from OEM type GM stamped steel rockers to roller rockers. The OEM ball socket design when running on a film of oil really doesn't make a significant amount of added friction when compared to roller rockers.

Best regards,

Harry