Another "Is Fuel Injection a Worthwhile Upgrade?" Question

RustyRatRod said
Now I'm not arguing, I'm just stating a fact that I KNOW to be true. My best friend Billy Peyton (RIP) had a 73 440 Challenger he bought NEW right outta high school. First thing he and his cronies did was pull the engine, 12:1, ported 906s, headers, big intake and carb, and a FULL ROLLER valve train. I've seen the pictures. Billy holdin that huge roller in his hand. Just how "far back" was the oil formulation changed? I can remember as a kid, seeing roller cam ads in hot rod mags in the mid 70s. They were stupid expensive fairly new tech, but they were there. I know ultimately as you say, rollers went mainstream across the board because of ZDDP being decreased. But what about "back then"?

I run roller cams all the time. The topic was why the OE’s went to them. It was because the government decided that catalytic converters would save the world, but the phosphorus and zinc coat the catalyst and kill it. So...to fix that folly the answer was a reduction in both of those components. And when you do that, you need to run a roller lifter because the flat lifters won’t survive.

That has nothing to do with roller cams in non OE appilcations. It’s great trying to have a conversation with people who twist everything around (not pointing at you RRR) and turn a topic about OE’s and why they did something and making it look like I said roller cams have no place in anything. It’s the way these people think they win.

The OE’s didn’t go to roller lifters for “area under the curve” or because they wanted to extend engine life. They didn’t care about engine life because once the warranty is up the OE’s don’t give a damn about anything. They did the roller lifter because they were forced into it.

My next engine (sadly) will have roller lifters, unless by some stroke of luck I find a set of mushroom lifters that don’t cost about what a good set of rollers cost. I’d rather rune the mushroom lifters because I want to net somewhere around .720ish lift on that engine and no way can you do that on a .904 lifter and expect it to live.

So unless a miracle happens that engine will get roller lifters and all the crapola that that requires.