Sorry if this is a novice question but just wondered what the pros and cons are to solid or hydr. cams. There is more maintnence on a solid cam, right? other than that whats the difference? Im gettin ready to take my 402 into the machine shop, have to start making choices on parts.
the car will be driven often, except for bad weather, looking at boring 60 over,10.5 comp, forged pistons, plan on a 100 shot of nos. have the rods ballanced and arp bolts put in. not sure on the heads yet, looking for a good set to buy. used or new anyone have any let me know. want oval port. right now looking at a 292 544" lunati cam at the moment, want that loppy idol, edelbrock RPM air gap, and 850 holley HEI ignition with 6A MSD. running a M21 tranny and 3:43 gears 12 bolt posi. any ideas? thanks

Yes, here goes..

Shoot for a more practical CR. of around 9.5 to 1 or so AND then go with a good old CC 282S solid!!

I figure you will be a lot happier this way then what you listed, imho..

pdq67

I had a solid cammed 396 and a solid cammed 327 many years ago. Those were factory cams, and they worked very well in those engines. Both were in front of 4-speed manual transmissions. Neither had any trouble revving nice and high.

After that, I started building my own engines, and I always used popular hydraulic grinds.

I had a cam failure January 1st of this year, and I installed a mild solid in my small block. I don't think I'll ever have a reason to go back to a hydraulic. More power over a wider RPM band, and better fuel economy to boot. It also revs higher. I've had to adjust the valves twice this year, and both times it took all of 15 minutes (including running the engine and double checking the lash).

So my vote is for solid. I just no longer see a legitimate reason to run a hydraulic.

Solids ?? Did you say Solids ?? Your speakin my language ! In all seriousnes tho I have a combo that is one heck of a lot mildier than yours and I'm running a solid.Last time I adj the valves was I think in Feb of this year....They still dont need adjusting...

This is just my opinion but for any kind of performance application I'd take a solid over a hyd most any day.Thats not to say a hyd wont make power..not saying that at all....Just my preferance is mechanical.... I agree with the guys above and some of the others here that a good solid cam has advantages ( and a couple disadvantages ) over a hyd...but the advantages out weigh the disadvantages.... Just dont overcam the thing.

Shoot for closer to 10:1 and use a 270-ish seat duration solid cam in it. Example Lunati/Brookshire 272, Comp XS274. This should give you some bottom to work with your shallow gears and plenty of revability.

If you did the same thing with a hyd cam, you couldnt rev nearly as well. + 5% torque with the solid as well ( approx).

Thanks for the relplies guys, ive been told by a few people that they thought my cam choice was probably a little big, I think ill probably go witha solid cam. Some of you guys said that you only adjusted once or twice a year, but how much do you drive your car? Ill be driving mine to mechanics school almost everyday, going to UTI in houston to learn all this stuff i dont know.

Originally posted by Anthony:
Some of you guys said that you only adjusted once or twice a year, but how much do you drive your car? How does 2000 miles per month strike you?

Sure, before I got the new job it was only about 700 miles per month. But now it's around 2000 and I've had to adjust once since then. I'm currently based in Houston and driving all over south Texas.

Again, it's not a long, drawn-out procedure. No big deal. A fraction of a turn of a ratchet (per valve) takes care of it.

BTW, I'm not familiar with UTI. Have you checked into SAM? They have a helluva performance technology program.

No i havent, are they in houston also? I had looked into Wyoming Tech but i hate the cold so i figured Universal technical institute in houston would fit me good, they have alot of ads in Hot Rod Mag, and Car Craft. Ive heard nothing but good things about uti, any info on this place you speak of? thanks

http://www.samracing.com/

It's not far from my central office. I haven't been to SAM's facility, but I've seen the results of their work. They tend to rack up quite a few wins down south with their project cars.

Unless you get some sort of monster cam you don't need to set the valves very often. I used them for years in my daily drivers with no problems.

I have been useing mechanical cams since circa 1974.
There was only one 3 year peroid where I didnt have at least one car with a mechanical cam.Most were daily drivers.But then again I never ran real aggressive ( valve action wise ) cams either.If you need the last bit of power then they are the way to go....but for most use a bit less aggressive will work fine for most applications.

Anthony. I'm not real experienced, but it shouldn't be that much maintenance. FOr the first 300 or miles , it varied some, and all-in-all, I had to tweak it around 5 times in the inital new engine stage. Drove it to Nashville, tweaked it again.( 700 miles straight) . Been fine since ( 1500 miles), but I did take a few thou out to lose some bottom end.

So even with a .600 lift cam and some 'hard use'. Every 1500-2000 miles is the worst it'll get. And once this mill wears in more, it shouldn't budge for ever. When it does, I'll check for some pushrod 'shortening'.

thanks for the replies, i have decided to go with a smaller cam, but im not expirienced to know what duration is gonna give me that loppy idol i want. will a 282 solid give me that?

Yes, in a 402 it should, please also look at the XS274 ( for 9.5-10:1 compression only , @ 10.5 you risk not being able to run on 93 octane). I think the split pattern is a much better fit in your case.

Solid vs: Hyd, would the Hyd be "easier" on non-hardened valve seats? I'm planning to use some '68 vintage heads with stainless valves on my small block. I have roller-tipped rockers. This will be a week-end only summer car. Thoughts?

No not necessaily, the function of how "hard" the valve hits that seat is a grind function./ According to Comp, their XE grinds shut that exhaust down fast, which is where the noise comes from. Thats the sort of thing you *might* be concerned with.